In assessing "Robin Hood" (2010) as a project, one must first, I suggest, view it as a film that its creators intended as a tool for reviving the genre, purposes and intentions of "historical drama". Writers Brian Helgeland (screenplay and story) and story writers Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris recast the Robin Hood legend in three vital ways at least. They made Robin Longstride a commoner, one only impersonating Robert Loxley, hereditary nobleman,at the request of his father to save their property from royal tax collectors. Secondly, they set the film after the death of Richard the Lionhearted, not during his lifetime. And then they laid the groundwork for a period of outlawry for Robin and his forces that would culminate as a "legend" in the writing of the Magna Charta forced upon Richard's successor King John by England's barons --nder the leadership of "Robin of the Hood" son of a father, a stonemason, who had died for trying to engineer this visionary charter of "rights" years before. Russell Crowe and his executive production team working with veteran director Ridley Scott deserve credit for many successes, I claim, not the least of which are the sets, major reimagnings of the Tower of London and entire castles, towns and villages, a Medieval siege, battles, troop landings from the Channel, court ceremonials, towns and forests. So many parts of this alternative history and reconstruction seem to me to work so realistically that there is much praise to distribute to the technical creators. First, there is the stirring but subtle music provided by Marc Streitenfeld, which I found by turns to be subtle and then noteworthy where majesty was implied. Then there was the clean color cinematography achieved by John Mathieson. More than a dozen art directors working together captured a Medieval English look that I suggest has never been surpassed on film, understating much but being as "colorful" as necessary as in the final meeting of barons with King John as the savvy could desire. Production Designer Arthur Max achieved an imitable yet original balance of light, nature, landscape and man- made buildings, as a setting for costumes, human forms, animals, etc. throughout. Set decorations by Sonja Klaus and the costumes created by Margarethe Schmoll and Sharon Long contributed mightily to the effect desired by the authors of transporting the viewer to the late 12th Century, but in making it a world where ideas, loyalties and the need for justice are not much different than our own 22nd Century needs for the same human en; this, I assert, was the formula by which Hollywood's filmmakers once circumvented the anti-conceptual bias, totalitarian bigotries and pseudo-puritanism of corporate studio moguls in the past to project an American--not U.S.--constitutional narrative onto past eras. Even more: the makeup, hairstyling, second-unit direction, lighting, sound and rerecording tasks met within the film were in most cases handled with distinction, seconding the believability of the main narrative's effect. Among the actors who helped to bring the story to enacted life on the screen, one must begin with Russell Crowe's sometimes understated commoner Robin played coolly against Cate Blanchett's worldly but noble Marian. Max Von Sydow seemed both noble and from a different, better era as Walter Loxley as did Eileen Atkins as Eleanor of Quitaine. Notable in the cast for their effectiveness were also Mark Strong as Godfrey, Matthew Macfadyen as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Kevin Durand as Little John, Danny Huston as Richard the Lionhearted, Mark Addy as Friar Tuck and Lea Seydoux as Isabella of Angouleme. As the cunning weakling John, Oscar Osaac is occasionally effective, and William Hurt underplays William Marshall with more than customary skill. No one else is given very much to do in this long attempt, but many smaller parts are by my standards well-done. In sum, I wrote at the time I first saw the film that its makers had single-handedly revived the color adventure genre, perhaps a most-welcome leaven to the bad concepts, neocon and altruist ideas, and fantasy-parody bent of film for over the past three decades as a demonstrably viable film choice. What was here expensively produced and used for dramatic effect can elsewhere be used as an antidote to brooding antiselfhoodism and postmodernistic reality- bashing on many occasions, hopefully in the form of westerns, adventures set in the human past and perhaps even idea-level films extending human hopes into a brighter, better future.
Review of Robin Hood
