Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" shows the avenger of the poor before he moves into Sherwood Forest - as cracked archer in the royal service. Director Ridley Scott is one in front of the famous saga, presenting a rebellious man who wants more than a bow and arrow riding through the woods.
63rd Film Festival in Cannes
With "Robin Hood" will be tonight at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival opens. This delightful rendezvous of world cinema this year, feels the crisis caused by protracted strikes in the film business naturally delayed. It was a difficult year, renowned director Thierry Frémaux at the presentation of his selection, seems, at least nominally, not quite as overwhelming as busy in recent years.
After all: Among the 19 works in competition for the Palme d'Or, there are new films by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel") and Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and with increases in the short term, a second British veteran in the race. These are the names of a number of auteur cinema coming across the western world, by Abbas Kiarostami and Takeshi Kitano, who returns to the yakuza environment. Out of competition, the Croisette, adorned with new films by Stephen Frears and Woody Allen, who would arrive with his stars Naomi Watts and Antonio Banderas. Not to mention Michael Douglas, Oliver Stone in the movie sequel to "Wall Street" again playing Gordon Gekko, the prophets of greed.
The corrective to this is called Jean-Luc Godard, who shows his "Film Socialisme," and another Swiss makes of high finance the process: As part of the Directors shows Jean-Stéphane Bron ("corn in Bundeshuus"), his new documentary about the social consequences the subprime crisis in the U.S. Cleveland. (Flo)
The film
Robin Hood (USA / GB 2010). 140 minutes. Directed by Ridley Scott. With Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow, William Hurt Others
Robin Hood or Robin of Loxley now looks like Russell Crowe, and why not? The man in the cinema has changed so often face, figure, and tights, and his legend has already for centuries, the eternal romantic life. In general we can confidently be called on a physiognomic truth. Perhaps the real Robin Hood was made so as to be a little gnome-like monument in front of the castle in Nottingham, he probably had bad teeth, but most likely is that a real Hood never existed at all, but only a collective dream of the same name.
And as for Crowe in "Robin Hood" by Ridley Scott, he is doing very well with his in battles acquired scars and fine wrinkles, which he dug out of the war in the face and the guilt of having been present when the King Lionheart massacre of 2700 prisoners left in Acre (3rd Crusade). He embodies the artistic standards, the realism of the story with the romance of history combine to effect. Because the means and the goal and ambition of Scott's film is, he wants a "truth" from which the legend then first place. The problem - if we want to have one of cinema entertainment - just that the romance too much realism is not always tolerate well (and vice versa, by the way) is.
Lazy monk knew more
A little life lived, a historical precedent, is behind Robin Hood probably, you know not only that. The notes onto 12th and 13 Century are strong. The first written evidence that long-circulating already drinking songs to an appropriate Robin finds himself in an English poem of 1377, where a lazy monk tells the following: "I know my father and our barely sings not like the priest. / But I know him verses of Robin Hood and Randolf Earl of Chester. "It is of, who knows, could have acted in the said earl to those Norman Earl of Chester (1172-1232), with the dispossessed of Robert Earl of Huntington Fitzooth (1160-1247) in the dispute over the county of Huntington was, which in turn had been a born Fitzooth Baron of Loxley and thus a suitable candidate to an Anglo-Saxon Nationalheldentum.
And that would now only a historical minimum of eight ways in which fragments of the legend. However, there are five of the other potential predators to Hood's yeomen, considered patriotic and poetic even harder. Only three candidates are from the literature seems better Loxley House of Huntington.
Once he has bathed, he likes the Lady
To some extent, as pathos of truth have Ridley Scott and his screenwriter Brian Helgeland ("A Knight's Tale") cooked in her film its own historically mythological soup, almost from down home middle age and a little fairy spirit of the old Hood, who indeed remain but must be what he always was: simply a right on the page. He is now called Robin Longstride, there is already a bit morose archer in the royal service, and everything starts with him on 25 Hoodsche March 1199 before the walls of the French Châlus castle where King Richard the Lionheart a really deadly shot a bolt through the neck. The thought is dramatically effective (though of course even break away the part of the legend in which a good king, the right marriage blessing).
It sets in motion all sorts: that it falls to the Longstride, England's crown, which also the French are behind her, to bring to London and the Sword of Loxley to Nottingham. That he himself is there to Sir Robert Loxley, instead of a fallen son and with will and blessing of the old Baron (Max Von Sydow), who has his nostalgic and social reasons. That he, of course, the Lady Marion Loxley (Cate Blanchett) and he likes her even when he has bathed. That it inevitably verschlägt him to side with the rebellious barons of the north, first against the tax-hungry King John, then with John against the French. And item: All this is evidence of quite differentiated, faktengenährtem sense of possibility and, it pointed looks from chain mail to the arrowhead extremely fitted correctly, a couple of times a dental hygienist and economic concessions aside.
Not beaten battles
Why not, as I said? Such a film would be fantasy and legend, if you already casts the romantic, social history, at least put on foundations. Would not quite clear as to material facts of the story and loose is driven: with battles that were not beaten, with an invasion by the French, who did not take place, with the "Magna Carta", the tore of King John (Kevin Durand) is, even though he has proven it signed in 1215. That may be nitpicking, but it's not funny. It turns Korrektheitsgetue in Ridley Scott's intellectual bluff.
At least they helped the poor Robin even a traumatic memory of his executed, freedom visionary father. If this is not the laziest trick is to smuggle the romance back to the Middle Ages. And just around the hood then get to it along with his men and his lady in the forest of Sherwood, where they take in the suggested continuation of the rich and give to the poor and reap neither sow nor, and the heavenly Father feedeth them. What is actually the whole detour?
