What is success? Is there an objective definition we can all agree upon? Yes, I know, it’s early in the day for this sort of semantic profundity. Possibly the answer is obviously ‘no’ and we can all move on and talk about something more interesting, such as an unsuccessful film that is actually pretty good. But isn’t this itself something of an oxymoron, privileging the financial elements of a movie’s performance over the creative ones? Formulations like this do tend to confirm that the film business is just that, an economic undertaking rather than a creative one. It would feel very odd to describe Minions or most of the Transformers films as failures, even though the consensus is they’re terrible – the fact remains they made more than enough money to keep their series running.
This line of thought always has a tendency to induce a state of mild depression in me, which if nothing else is an appropriate mood to enjoy the subtle pleasures of Richard Lester’s Robin and Marian, from 1976. Lester is best remembered for a series of boisterously cheerful films he directed in the sixties and seventies, starting with A Hard Day’s Night and Help! (with, to coin a phrase, the Beatles), proceeding to a couple of adaptations of The Three Musketeers, and then concluding with one-and-a-bit Superman films for the same producers (he was brought in to replace Richard Donner during Superman II). Robin and Marian is, for the most part, a more muted piece of work, but none the worse for it.
One immediately noticeable thing about the film is that this adaptation of a famous English folk legend was made entirely on location somewhere completely different: rural Spain. The scenery and landscape is gorgeous, but it doesn’t exactly scream the midlands. Perhaps it’s slightly better at being medieval France, which is where the movie opens. Many years have passed since the point at which most Robin Hood films conclude, and Robin (Sean Connery) has been in the service of Richard the Lionheart (Richard Harris) all this time – now he is a worn-out, heavily-scarred old soldier, still accompanied by his faithful lieutenant Little John (Nicol Williamson, who’s very average-sized for the part). Robin finds his loyalty tested by the king’s increasing greed and arrogance, and is nearly executed for insubordination – but Richard dies of an infected wound, setting the duo free as his last act.
So they return to an England which they have not seen in decades, supposedly intent on living quietly in Sherwood – though Robin does find his mind turning to his old lover Marian, whom he rather ungallantly left without explaining himself all those years ago. Soon enough they hook up with their old friends Will Scarlet (Denholm Elliot) and Friar Tuck (Ronnie Barker), who have strange tidings to tell – Marian has taken the veil and is now the Mother Superior of the local convent.
Robin finds this hard to believe but decides to pop in and see her anyway – and finds Marian (Audrey Hepburn) far from delighted to see him, on this of all days. This is because the new king (Ian Holm in a cameo) has fallen out with the Pope and ordered all leaders of the Church expelled from the country. This includes Marian, but she has refused to leave, and so the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) is under orders to take her into custody. It’s just like old times again suddenly!
But of course it isn’t, really, and the passage of time is really what the film is about. Encroaching mortality isn’t a common theme in big studio pictures even nowadays; though films about older people have become more common (their money is as good at the box office as anyone else’s), they’re invariably of the subverting-expectations-living-life-to-the-full type, not the slow-creep-to-the-yawning-grave. The film was originally titled The Death of Robin Hood until the studio insisted on a change (possibly also to get Hepburn’s character into the title); contrary to what some sources suggest, no-one has ever actually died on screen while playing Robin Hood, but Connery comes as close as anyone (possibly tying for the award with Michael Praed, though there’s a touch of ambiguity there). The film has an honesty about human frailty – there’s a tough authenticity to the period setting from the very start, which contributes to this (even if the football shorts which Connery appears to be wearing under his costume in some scenes seem just a bit anachronistic).
Mixed in with this is the fact that this is very possibly the only truly revisionist Robin Hood film – inasmuch as you can revise something which probably wasn’t true to begin with. The characters are looking back on the events of their distant youths, and in general concluding that the legends which have grown up around them are just that. The Sheriff isn’t a snarling pantomime villain this time, but someone it’s easy to like – demanding the respect his position deserves, but also mindful of the lives of his men and unwilling to see them wasted. ‘I should have taught you better,’ he murmurs to the bodies of his soldiers after one bloody skirmish with the outlaws. In comparison, it’s Robin who is reckless with his followers’ safety, leading them out to an unwinnable pitched battle because the only alternative is to admit he is just a man and not invincible. This all leads up to a conclusion which is potentially crushingly downbeat.
That it isn’t, and that the film is rather beautifully poignant and moving rather than simply bleak, is mostly due to a wonderfully poetic script from James Goldman, which gives the characters space to breathe and reflect on their lives and the choices they have made. Marian speaks quite matter-of-factly of attempting suicide after Robin abandoned her for the Crusades (it was this which led her first to the convent), but still finds herself unable to resist him, despite the passage of the intervening years. It’s a marvellously warm and tender performance from Hepburn, playing well against an on-form Connery. His Robin seems rejuvenated by seeing Marian again, refusing to accept that time has had any effect on him at all, despite the evidence to the contrary. It’s a subtle and layered turn from an actor in his prime, and a long way from the thin but lucrative roles that were to become Connery’s bread and butter in subsequent decades.
It’s a beautifully made and very touching film, but it’s not that difficult to understand why it might have faltered at the box office – for if the heroes and heroines of legends aren’t guaranteed a happy ever after, what chance the rest of us? It’s a hard pill to swallow but Lester, Goldman and the cast coat it in honey. There is warmth here as well as wisdom.
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