FILMS ... with Tim Milfull
Robin Hood (M)
Director: Ridley Scott
Stars: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow, William Hurt
Rating: 3/5 1
40 minutes, now screening
Most people, when they think of the legendary thief Robin Hood, will come up with images of a dashing Errol Flynn at best, a dodgy Kevin Costner at worst, or a pre-Saw Cary Elwes in the very funny Mel Brooks film, Robin Hood: Men in Tights.
Until Ridley Scott came along, few people would have thought of the chunky Russell Crowe in the role. But in the director’s latest film, Crowe seems to have made the part his own, even if it’s more two-dimensional than most movie characters. Scott and screenwriter Brian Helgeland – whose credits include the excellent LA Confidential and Mystic River, and the atrocious Man on Fire and The Sin Eater – ignore the Robin we all know and love, who swoops down through Sherwood Forest liberating the rich of their booty and distributing it to the poor; instead, the new Robin Hood shows us the history behind the man, with the film opening on the final gruesome stages of King Richard the Lionheart’s decade-long Crusade, on which Robin has become a grudging participant as a common archer.
By the time, he returns to England, he serves under a new king, John (Oscar Isaac), and his little retinue of veteran soldiers are looking for work.
In meeting a promise to a dying man, Robin travels to Nottingham, where he meets the gorgeous but earthy Marion Loxley (Cate Blanchett), and her father-in-law, Sir Walter (Max von Sydow), who holds some secrets to Robin’s past.
At this stage, we’re almost halfway through the film, and there’s a foreign coup in the offing, as well as some nefarious shenanigans on behalf of the wicked Godfrey (Mark Strong) and a duplicitous Sheriff of Nottingham (Matthew Macfadyen).
Scott’s version of the legend is all suitably rollicking, gory and spectacular, but the film feels a little thin, and too obviously a very long advertisement for a sequel where Robin finally becomes an outlaw. It’s a big risk on the part of Scott and Crowe. Robin Hood 2 anyone?
Ribbon twirls a compelling, puzzling tale
The White Ribbon (M)
Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Christian Friedel, Rainer Bock, Klaußner, Susanne Lothar
Rating: 4.5/5
144 minutes, now screening
Most of Austrian director, Michael Haneke’s films have been set in contemporary times, and ask us to consider certain small and large-scale societal issues. In The White Ribbon, however, the director leaps just under a hundred years, to a village in Germany where life is almost feudal – farmers work for the local aristocracy, while teachers and pastors and doctors are still regarded as respected pillars of the community.
The story is narrated by an elderly headmaster (Christian Friedel), who is reflecting upon some crucial events that occurred in his little village in the years before the Great War. At the time, he was in his thirties, and doggedly courting Eva (Leonie Benesch) a woman almost half his age.
The pupils at his school are, on the whole, a dour-looking and seemingly duplicitous bunch who looks as if they might have been driven straight over from the sets of The Village of the Damned or The Stepford Wives. The teacher’s peers include a cruelly pragmatic doctor (Rainer Bock) and his mistress, the self-effacing midwife (Susanne Lothar), and a fire-and-brimstone pastor (Burghart Klaußner), who rules his large brood with an iron fist.
When strange and shocking events begin to unfold in the village, its inhabitants soon become confused about where to point their accusing fingers, and the audience is plunged into an elaborate puzzle that doesn’t have any obvious solution.
Screened in stark, but beautiful black-and-white, and featuring some astonishing performances, The White Ribbon warrants more than one viewing and all manner of debate after the curtains close.
