English legends: Robin Hood and Ridley Scott

With a romance between big Hollywood stars—Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett—and lavish medieval sets that were built,pillaged and burned down,Robin Hood is a spectacle very much in the Ridley Scott tradition.

Scott’s film is an origins story of how Robin Longstride,a journeyman archer in service of the king,became Robin Hood. Spirited away to a French monastery,Robin’s path is changed when King Richard is mortally wounded,and Robin decides to head out for England with a newly formed posse of merry men.

They chance upon an ambush,and Robin is tasked by a dying man to return a sword to Nottingham. There he meets and clashes with Marion Loxley (Blanchett),the widow of the man who owned the sword. With steady nudges from the father (Max von Sydow),Marion and Robin fall in love and fight both for and against a country.

“One studio head said to me,‘I make movies I don’t even want to see,’” Scott said. “I find that depressing and told him as much. I only want to make movies that I want to see.”

While commercial success is not always a given,critical reaction is much more of a constant: some critics line up to point out that they think the big vessel is a little on the empty side. “In a Ridley Scott film,the setups are so much more exciting than what he eventually delivers,” said David Edelstein,film critic for New York magazine,who had yet to see Robin Hood.

Throughout his career,Scott has brushed aside criticism like so many rubber-tipped arrows,in part because he has supreme confidence in every aspect of his craft. He has been a set designer,a camera operator and an art director. He directed hundreds of commercials before the release of his first British feature in 1977,The Duelists,and his first Hollywood effort two years later,Alien.

Scott has great relationships with the actors. Crowe has made it his business to keep signing up to work with Scott. Robin Hood is their fifth collaboration: in addition to Gladiator,they have made American Gangster,Body of Lies and A Good Year. “He comes prepared to work,” Crowe said. “He can tell you exactly how many horses he has,how many severed heads he has on hand in the props department. He is the boss.” Crowe said that Scott was a shy person who enjoys spending time with oil paints. “I like working on all kinds of things,” Scott said.
For Scott,Robin Hood offered a chance to tackle once again the life of a soldier,and the mud,filth and mayhem in Robin Hood does not make it look any more enticing than the world of Gladiator,which won a best picture Oscar and a best actor statue for Crowe.

Issues of class and station in life,always a pertinent concern for the British,are woven throughout Robin Hood. Given that Scott is also Sir Ridley,it’s a complicated business in his hands. King John is an ineffectual greedhead in Robin Hood,but Robin Longstride and his merry men go to war on the king’s behalf because he is what stands between England and the condescending French.
Scott said that the corrupting force of power is a persistent theme in his films because it is how history is often made. “In a sense you are watching Robin beginning to understand the corruption around him,whether it is King John or Philip of France,” he said. “And watching that forming of Robin Hood is the beginning of the legend,of how he came to be.”
_David Carr / NYT