The Death of Robin Hood: The Haunting of a Movie Critic
Movies can be magical things that make us feel so many different emotions. They take us on fantastic journeys and adventures in worlds beyond our imaginations. Sometimes they stay grounded in reality, but make us stop and think and reexamine our selves, make us think, or to look outward and understand others better. Then there is The Death of Robin Hood. It is not any of those things, and all of those things and more. This film ended up being a specter that followed me home and has been haunting me ever since. I’m not sure if I appreciate that, or wish it would go away. One thing I do know is that in every measurable way, this movie is near perfect.
The Death of Robin Hood was written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, who also brought us the amazing Pig starring Nicolas Cage (one of his best performances), as well as the incredibly brilliant A Quiet Place: Day One. He brings that same masterful storytelling to this film. Hugh Jackman stars as the titular character and delivers maybe his best performance in a film to date. Jodie Comer also stars in the film as Sister Brigid and balances out Jackman’s Robin Hood beautifully.
The story finds our hero of myth and legend living as a hermit in these mountainous hills, away from any town or village or city of note. We find him as a young woman finds him- she has been wandering in the wintery wilderness and sees his fire and he lets her stay by it. She talks to him about Robin Hood living in these hills and that he is said to help the weak and protect them. He replies and lets her know that Robin Hood is a villain, a monster, a murderer and a thief, stating he is not hero. As they sleep that night, we see her sneaking up on him, and trying to kill him, and he instead kills her, pretty violently, and asks who she is and who sent her. It is a family that has a blood debt with him and she was sent to assassinate him. The next scene finds him dragging her body to a grave, and as the camera pans out, we see that he is surrounded by similar graves. This has been happening for some time. From here Little John shows up and asks for his help to save his family, and this sets Robin on one last adventure or journey that will lead to his story’s end.
In every technical aspect, The Death of Robin Hood excels. The film was shot on 35mm film, which works to add a level of grit to the feel of the story and film- adding to the realism throughout. It was shot on a 420 million budget, which meant they didn’t have a big action movie budget and had to use tried and tested shooting and production techniques to achieve the look and feel they wanted. The cinematography captures the beauty of Northern Ireland when appropriate- making it feel like a land of fairy tales, and then at other times, the cinematography makes it, the same land feel wild, untamed, unhinged, reminding the audience that land, like people has many sides to it. And that all ties into the story playing out on screen.
The music has a Celtic feel to it, sometimes including lyrics that are hauntingly beautiful, and other times it is just instrumental. Scores can be distracting sometimes, and at other times they can be forgetable. Somewhere in the middle is that sweet spot where the score is working with the actors, the cinematography, the sound editing to all together weave a tapestry of a story. This score and music hit that sweet spot perfectly.
The Death of Robin Hood is not a happy movie. It is heavy. It hits hard at the very beginning, and while you look for some kind of lasting emotional relief, it’s never found. We talk a lot about deconstructing heroes now. Pulling them apart, and rebuilding them in a new image- a little rougher around the edges maybe- a little more “real.” With The Death of Robin Hood, Sarnoski does something different here. He isn’t deconstructing a character to rebuild a character. He is wrestling with a question of what happens when we pull back the layers of legend and lore and we find out our heroes weren’t heroic at all? That they were men of violence and death. What happens when we have to come face to face with that reality? What about those individuals? Coming to the end of your life- hearing the legends and myths and stories, but knowing you were not that hero. There was no redemption for Robin Hood. There was confession. There was surrender. There was no redemption. That’s a heavy weight to leave the theater with- that’s the specter that followed me home, that I wrestled with in the days that followed. That heavy, beautiful specter of thought and guilt and fear. The Death of Robin Hood is a film that won’t just stay with me for a week or a month, it is one I will carry with me for my whole life.
My grade for The death of Robin Hood is an A
The Death of Robin Hood is playing in theaters everywhere now!
