Robin Hood & the Tea Party

Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe, is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, if you like to see Englishmen shooting arrows through the necks of perfidious Frenchmen. I do. It's also a good movie to show before a Tea Party gathering, which is both a strength and a weakness of the movie but, either way, is very interesting.

The movie might have been more accurately entitled Robin Hood: The Prequel. It follows Robin Longstride from the end of King Richard's adventures in France, to the beginning of Robin's exile in the Greenwood. That's right. It is not until the very end that Robin is finally in the woods.

What occupies the film are the tensions between national unity in the face of foreign threats and loyalty to kings who ain't what you'd want them to be, on the one hand, and liberty and self-government on the other. If that sounds abstract and boring, the movie clothes all of it in chain mail with swords singing, arrows whizzing, and peasants locked in burning buildings. Here and there a lot of attractive flesh manages to squeeze out of both cheap and very expensive garments. Trust me: you won't be bored.

Unlike most versions of Robin Hood, the Lionheart is not lionized. He has bled his kingdom dry committing atrocities in lands far from England, and he don't put up with honest opinions even when he solicits them. Still, it's hard not to like him a little. He knows exactly what he is and what his limits are. The same cannot be said for his brother John who is, as usual, a piece of work.

There are some egregious flaws in the movie. One of them is not that the writers distorted the legend. The legend is all over the place, so why not tie it into the drama of the Magna Carta? But when Robin comes down among the other lords to lecture King John about rights and social contracts, the language is so thoroughly American that they might as well have been playing baseball. And there is a latter scene where Cate Blanchett shows up where she has no business being, and it is so goofy that it almost ruined the movie for me. But it didn't.

Robin Hood is great swashbuckling fun. All the stuff about lambs becoming lions and kings having need of their subjects, we Americans really believe this stuff and that isn't a flaw in our character. I am pretty sure that any red-blooded tea party activist will come out of the theater with spirit roused to scare Democratic incumbents away from townhall meetings. One wonders if the producers had political motivations of their own, which would suggest a change in Hollywood, or whether they shrewdly sensed that there was a market for complaints about kings who tax and spend too much.

It's a good afternoon, and you can be sure that there are sequels coming.

Comments

[Miranda]

Sold! If it's half as good as the BBC series, it'll be well worth the watch!

[Donald Pay]

I'm not sure how Robin Hood would tie into the Magna Carta. Most versions of the legend have Robin Hood as a yeoman, which is a couple rungs down the social ladder from the magnates who pushed the Magna Carta on King John. (King John, by the way, pretty much ignored it, and it was watered down over the years.) The magnates of the time were pretty much like CEOs of financial institutions in ours. They might not actually elect the King, but they continually curried favor or plotted to gain maximum advantage for themselves. The Magna Carta was far from a call for universal suffrage. It was more of a document that would shift a bit of power over to themselves. They didn't care at all about the rights of the Robin Hoods of the world.

[KB]

Miranda: I don't know the BBC series. This one was worth a watch.

Donald: I agree with pretty much everything you say. In this film, Robin Hood is a yeoman. He is more or less conscripted to take the place of a nobleman. That is one way of reconciling otherwise irreconcilable legends. Yes, powerful corporate bodies, like Microsoft or SEIU or the House of York, try to influence government on their behalf. That's called politics.

I also agree about the Magna Carta. It was a bill of rights for noble families, not for individual men and women. European liberalism has always been more corporate than American liberalism. That is what I meant when I said that Robin's language in the film was very American.

[Download Movies Online]

I have seen this movie so many times. this is my favorite movies. i just love reading such kind of articles. Thanks for sharing your views.