I'm tempted to say I didn't get anything done this week, but that just isn't true. I finished a fair amount of tasks, but they weren’t the things I usually accomplish. Didn't get much reading done, but I had an interview last Wednesday. (I’ll keep you posted on that, here’s hoping.) I feel like I’m focusing in different directions and that isn't exactly a bad thing. After all, at the end of May I set some goals that were bound to push me out of my comfort zone.
I really hope that means I’ll be able to read as much as I am. The book club I’m in is helping (his guys, if you read this) but I’ve recently found myself refocusing on watching movies. I attribute this to the workshop I’m taking with a friend on critical theory for film, television and (most importantly) literature. It’s early days in the shop yet, but I can feel my brain slowly rewiring to appreciate media in a new light. That’s why I’m taking the workshop after all, and I really. In the past couple of years I’ve felt my attention span drop precipitously, and I wanted to take this class as a way to combat the urge to second screen TV, or to grow my attention span for reading. I like audiobooks, but I really need to get back to reading books and e books on my own.
So here’s to that. I’m getting back into movies with another friend, for similar reasons. I want to regain my appreciation for film that used to have. That’s honestly why I’m looking forward to watching The Odyssey next weekend. I love going to the movies.
The last movie I saw in theaters was The Death of Robin Hood. Interesting movie; consider this a mini-review. I’ll start out by saying that this film had the worst marketing campaign for what it actually ended up being. Watching the trailers, you’d imagine that this film would be a action-heavy, John Wick-style thriller with a cynical edge. The trailers and posters boasted incredible violence and the tagline “HE WAS NO HERO” so I wasn’t expecting much.
I was tricked. You see, I was informed by a friend that some of the original Robin Hood legends didn’t really have the folk heroism that is ubiquitously associated with the character now. I haven’t read them, I probably should. But that frame’s the movie’s take on Robin Hood less as cynical revisionism and more... depressingly real?
The story starts with Robin Hood as an outlaw, and a particularly brutal one at that. After being nigh-mortally wounded while helping his friend John Little take revenge on the people who chased him from his farm, Robin is left in the care of a mysterious prioress at an isolated abbey, and must contend with his mortality and his violent past. Yeah, that premise isn’t as cynical as it seems. Honestly, it more resembles an Igmar Bergman movie than action thriller with it’s hallucinatory dream sequences, existentialist themes of death, redemption and forgiveness, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s less allegorical than an Igmar Bergman film, certainly paced like one, but there are a few interesting moments of symbolism.
I say it’s paced like a Bergman film and that might be it’s biggest fault for some audiences. It’s seriously slow. That’s both good and bad to my mind. I appreciate the intensity behind the deliberate pace but sometimes you’d wish some scenes would move faster. For instance, the opening fight scenes are long takes, drawing out the blood and viscera in a really uncomfortable way. That works, it’s an effective way to Glue your audience to their seats. However, the pace of a second battle a short while later is so languid you almost don’t even know tension is building until the shocking climax. (Side note, this movie has the best hand-mangling scene ever filmed, for whatever THAT’S worth.) So when the story transitions the Abbey, it ends up feeling like it’s running at the same pace. That’s fine for the later half of the movie, building tension as several characters cross paths through blood feuds and the hand of fate. You might wish the climax would pick up the pace a little, but I thought it was appropriate.
Ultimately, it’s a good movie to watch and mull over your own mortality (in a good way.) The cast is great; Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett, Noah Jupe and Faith Delaney are an excellent supporting cast. Hugh Jackman is a decent Robin Hood, brimming with both simmering anger and weary regret. Jodie Comer delivers a wonderful exercise in restrained anger as the Abbey’s Prioress, Robin’s foil for most of the movie.
I think The Death of Robin Hood is still in theaters somewhere. Highly recommend.
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