Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 29-June-03
Spoiler Rating: High

Robin and Marian (1976)

Many years ago I caught the tail end of Robin and Marian on TV, and it made a big impression on me, lodging in the back of my mind like a half-forgotten dream of mystery and beauty. At long last the tides of fate, the selection at my local Blockbuster, and the whims of my movie appetite have led me to see the film in its entirety. What I found is that the ending must be taken in the context of the whole, and that the movie's tag line, "Love is the greatest adventure of all," is not as rosy as it seems. The last ten minutes of Robin and Marian are indeed powerful and unforgettable, but mostly because they are a twisted, infuriating, and altogether disturbing finale to a movie that looks, for the most part, like a romantic action flick.

(The cautious reader will note at this point that when I say the Spoiler Rating for this Spotlight is high, I really mean it.)

The big draw of Robin and Marian is that it stars the unlikely but exceptionally attractive pair of Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn (in one of her last movie roles). As you could probably guess if you didn't know, the movie is a version of the Robin Hood tale, but it has a particular twist: it focuses on the hero's later days, when his king is dead, his crusade is over, his hair is turning grey, and he hasn't seen his old flame "Maid" Marian for well nigh 20 years. Connery is at once the best choice for the aging Robin and the worst: on the one hand, he looks like a woodsy hero of old and a roguish leader of men, but on the other hand, he's clearly too strong, hearty, and sexy even with grey hair to make the film's strained "geezer-beyond-his-prime" theme work. (Indeed, it's amusing to consider that this summer, almost 30 years after Robin and Marian came out, Connery will add another action hero to his still growing résumé.) While Hepburn is as lovely as ever, her frail body and soft voice are no match for Connery's robustness. It's difficult to imagine that her Marian was ever a rebellious young thing capable of a rowdy silvan lifestyle, and her wan, tight-lipped variety of determination makes all of her actions — both those she describes and those we witness — seem like the flailing of a desperate mind.

But this might be exactly the point. For all is not right with the Marian of this tale, though it takes a little while for the viewer to realize it. Before she fully gels into major character, the movie's slow depiction of Robin's return and nonchalant reclaiming of Marian brings up notions of how incidental women must have been to all men for whom warfare was life's calling. While you're able to believe that Robin once loved Marian, it's also easy to understand how the sedentary life that she necessarily represented was not a viable option for him, especially when his society offered alternative relationships, such as his devotion to King Richard (Richard Harris in an early cameo) and his lifelong attachment to right-hand man Little John (Nicol Williamson). But whereas Robin, being an able-bodied male, had other means of making a satisfying life beyond a home and family, Marian did not. Thus, as she reveals to Robin in fits of anguished release, after he left her years ago she attempted suicide and then, having failed, began a 20-year-long battle to completely exorcise herself of emotion and desire in the seclusion of an abbey.

Particularly when compared to the stiff, preening nobles and soldiers who are shown scrapping for power in King John's England, Connery's Robin — running around half-naked and climbing trees like a schoolboy — is a breath of fresh air, in the face of which all of Marian's hard-won frigidity crumbles almost instantly. But the problem is that although Robin has come back and still wants her, nothing has really changed: he still attracts people to him as a leader, he still wants to live like a vagabond in the forest, and he still intends to wage war on the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) and all who would oppose his way of life. So, when the older, grimmer Marian finds her entreaties falling on deaf ears and witnesses Robin's final, almost fatal showdown with the Sheriff, she decides to take matters into her own hands. Helping her lover off the field of battle, she tells him she will heal his wounds but actually gives him poison, which she then drinks as well. Realizing what she has done, he cries out for Little John (his only faithful love, it seems), but then forgives Marian when she tells him with her last breath, "I love you more than God."

If you hadn't seen the rest of the movie, this final scene could appear quite beautiful, assuming that Robin is a starry eyed old man about to humiliate himself in a way that would diminish his legendary stature, treasured masculinity, and inherent nobility, and that he and Marian are so closely connected that she has the right, if anyone does, to judge the best time for his death. However, when added to all that came before, this scene is instead an unsettling moment that reveals, not Robin's decrepitude or his symbiotic relationship with Marian, but rather her deep-seated feeling of impotence. After a lifetime marked by abandonment and irrelevance, she seizes the opportunity to take Robin for her own on the only terms available. His sudden acceptance of her decision only adds to the upsetting tenor of the moment; it's as if, after a lifetime of following the dictates of his expansive nature and the expectations of his sex, he feels just old and tired enough to throw Marian a bone, to let the woman he loves as much as he can finally have her way. That the joining of their lives and souls has to occur in such a fashion makes for a fairly thought-provoking sidebar to the notion of romantic love, particularly as related to the medieval tradition of which Robin Hood is a central figure. Still, it isn't exactly the stuff that dreams are made of.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.