The career of Robin Williams launched on his strengths as a comedian, specifically on the ABC sitcom “Mork & Mindy.” Which is why it’s so fascinating that he was able to pivot with his first few movie roles post-TV, which were dramatic, starting with 1982’s “The World According to Garp” and then 1984’s “Moscow on the Hudson.”

In the latter, he plays a Soviet circus musician named Vlad who leaves everything he knows behind in Russia to start a new life in the United States. It might be my favorite role he played and I find myself returning to it again and again for its humanistic portrait of the immigrant experience. It’s not currently available on any streaming platform, but it is rentable. And if you’re wondering if Hollywood ever had the stomach to tell a story like this — with wit and charm and a sense of absurdity — it’s a reminder that studio executives and producers once backed this kind of storytelling in an earlier era.

I initially revisited “Moscow on the Hudson” nearly 10 years ago for the Chicago Tribune during the first Trump administration. Now here we are again, with worsening circumstances.

The movie is about the realities of starting over with no support systems in place and how humbling and emotional that can be.

The film’s director and co-writer Paul Mazursky died in 2014, but I was able to track down the script’s other writer, Leon Capetanos, who had this to say about the subject matter:

It’s not easy to be all of a sudden in a foreign land, even though it looks like the gleaming palace on the hill. You think, if I can just get to America things will be fine — I’m a good worker, I can make a living, my children can get an education — all these things are in your head that propel you here. But the reality is always more complicated and you have to be a pretty strong person to figure it all out and make it work. My father was an immigrant from Greece, so I’m a first generation out.

Vlad is such a rich character, at once charming, melancholic and stubborn. But who is he in this new place? The abrupt change in his circumstances is exciting because it’s so different, but also fraught and scary. There’s a moral weight to the way he has to navigate everything anew — and a dignity the movie gives him, which is constantly being negotiated. It’s a story that puts hope front and center, along with the need for human connections.

The movie understands that there must be humor, as well, and “Moscow on the Hudson” might be best known for a cacophonous set piece that takes place in the middle of Bloomingdale’s, where Vlad impulsively defects while the circus troupe is on tour in New York. From my piece in the Tribune:

It’s at once hilarious and chaotic and full of gawping shoppers who seem curious if somewhat baffled by the intensity of Vlad’s decision. He clutches a pair of designer jeans and says sweatily but firmly, “I defect." 

One of the store’s security men pulls out his radio: “This is Officer 14, I have a defector between Estee Lauder and Pierre Cardin.” A store-wide commotion ensues and the security guard — who soon becomes Vlad’s first and closest friend in America (played by Cleavant Derricks) — asserts his authority over the Soviet handlers: “I told you to back off! You’re in my jurisdiction, which runs from style boutique through denim then right up to personal fragrances, so keep your hands off the man!” 

With the exception of Derricks’ security guard, all of the film’s primary characters are immigrants. Capetanos told me that was a conscious choice, because “people come from everywhere. You can’t turn a corner without finding a person who’s from another country.”

But it is everything that unfolds after Vlad defects — the succession of menial jobs that he works, his budding romance with a fellow immigrant (Maria Conchita Alonso) and his attempts to grapple with frustration and homesickness — that give the film its emotional heft. The score is a gorgeous melody borrowed from a Russian circus and arranged for the piano by the film’s composer David McHugh.

“Immigrants weren’t vilified the way they are right now” Capetanos said when they wrote the film. “But even then, we weren’t extolling American liberty, we were saying it was flawed. This is tough, to be an immigrant. It’s not an easy road. That's the whole point of the movie. To remind people. It’s hard to do this.”

In the movie’s final image, we see Vlad busking with his saxophone. “He’s got liberty,” Capetanos said. “But he also has loneliness.”

With the fear and anxiety brought on by the immigration raids that have been occurring in many U.S. cities these past several months, it feels meaningful to be reminded of just how daunting the immigrant experience can be even in far less dangerous circumstances.

A more recent film also comes to mind: The 2008 indie “Sugar,” about a baseball prospect from the Dominican Republic who arrives in the U.S. to play for a farm team in Iowa. (It’s available to stream on Peacock.)

Written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (who would go on to write and direct 2019’s “Captain Marvel”), they vividly capture what it means to be plunged into new surroundings where everything is foreign and discombobulating.

Miguel (played by Algenis Perez Soto) is nicknamed Sugar. Like many of his teammates, his English is limited and the language barrier is an impediment at the diner where he eats during spring training. There’s a wonderful moment where a server clocks the issue and brings him a plate with eggs done three different ways, realizing that Miguel doesn’t have the vocabulary yet.

Because he isn’t paid enough to live on his own, the league sets him up with a host family. (This once-common practice has since been phased.) Staying with a seemingly well-meaning but paternalistic religious couple is deeply isolating and infantilizing. “No cervesas in the casa and no chicas in the bedroom,” they tell him. “And you must be quiet after 10.”

Even when many of the logistical challenges of moving to a new country are squared away — as a player, he has a place to live, a daily structure and income — the experience is overwhelming. And Miguel ultimately makes a decision that puts his legal standing as an immigrant in jeopardy. You feel for him and empathize with his situation. 

“Minari,” which came out in 2020, might be one of the more high profile recent films (if you consider a six-year-old movie “recent”) to tell an immigrant’s story from the inside about a Korean family looking to make a go of it in rural Arkansas. The rough outlines of the story are autobiographical for writer-director Lee Isaac Chung, who filters it through his memories of childhood while also sorting through his adult understanding of the fantasies and realities of the so-called American dream.

The family must make all kinds of adjustments to their new surroundings, which has a strangeness that can be alarming, or just different from what they’re used to, all of which creates a sense of limbo. The white people in town seem ignorant of anything (or anyone) outside their own experience.

As a result, the family has few interactions with their neighbors. Their focus — and the movie’s focus — becomes inward, on the goings-on inside the cramped mobile home they occupy.

“Minar” would go on to earn multiple Oscar nominations, and a win for supporting actress Youn Yuh-jung, because it does movies are supposed to do — reflect our lives back to us, and give us a window in the lives of others. You do that by telling straightforwardly human stories.

So why is there such a dearth of these stories in recent years?

Here’s how the author and scholar Jessica Fjeld, who focuses on tech and human rights, frames it in a recent blog post:

The arts are means of driving connection, and acknowledging difference. 

It doesn’t seem like today’s studio executives have much interest in that, and there are likely a few things driving that. Fjeld is not speaking about Hollywood specifically, but more broadly, and points to a reality that’s been simmering for a while now, and it explains the kind of TV and film we’ve been getting:

How artists push boundaries makes them dangerous to entrenched power structures and established hierarchies.

Meanwhile, it would be nice if directors, producers and casting directors at least thought more deeply about the value of casting actors who are of the races and ethnicities being targeted right now, especially if the project is based on source material that includes that specificity.

A24 was one example of not doing that this week, with the announcement that Odessa A’zion (“I Love LA” and “Marty Supreme”) had been cast in the studio’s adaptation of the book “Deep Cuts” to play a character of Mexican heritage.

A certain amount of head-scratching ensued from people familiar with the book. A’zion has since pulled out, saying on Instagram: “Guys!! I am with ALL of you and I am NOT doing this movie.”

Hollywood has a long history of doing this. It just seems like right now, when anyone who looks or sounds or “seems” sufficiently “ethnic” (and, notably, not wealthy) is being targeted, maybe don’t erase them on-screen as well.