“THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD” My rating: B- (Opens Sept. 5 at the Tivoli )
94 minutes | MPAA rating: R
Like it or loathe it, “The Last of Robin Hood” succeeds in taking a red-flag subject — pedophilia — and forcing us to reconsider our intense feelings about this taboo.
The writing/directing team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland get away with this by relating a largely true story involving one of Hollywood’s most charismatic leading men.
Here are the facts: In the last two years of his life, legendary big-screen swashbuckler Errol Flynn kept as his mistress a girl — a self-described “dancer/singer/actress,” though any one of those labels is debatable — who was only 15 when their relationship began.
Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning) had been kicking around the periphery of Hollywood for years. Most recently she had faked her age to get work as a backup dancer in musicals. That’s where she was spotted by the always-on-the-prowl Flynn (Kevin Kline), who was working on a nearby soundstage.
A practiced bullshitter with a charming line of self-deprecation (told by a fan that he had seen one of Flynn’s movies five times, the actor responds: “How extraordinary — I could barely get through it once”), Flynn wooed and seduced Beverly.
But a strange thing happened. The old alcoholic womanizer fell in love. He called Beverly his “little sprite” and “wood nymph.” He dubbed her “Woodsy.”
Curiously, “The Last of Robin Hood” is less about Flynn and Beverly (a pretty but vacuous girl with a largely unformed personality) than it is about Flynn and Beverly’s mother, Florence Aadland (Susan Sarandon).
Florence was a classic stage mother and then some. Desperate to see her daughter succeed in show-biz, she swallowed her questions about Flynn’s motives and chose to believe that he was simply a benevolent older fellow who recognized Beverly’s talent and wanted to advance her career.
In effect, she became a beard for the illicit relationship, serving as the parental chaperone whose presence was meant to prove that all was above board.
Says Flynn: “Mothers see what mothers want to see.”
At some point Florence figured out what was up, but by that time she was happily part of the Flynn entourage, enjoying a life of travel, fine food, and drink (like Flynn, she was an alcoholic).
In effect, she pimped out her daughter for 15 minutes of fame.
Her powers of self-delusion are impressive. Beverly and Errol, she maintains, represent “a love story that will stand the test of time.” What’s weird is that by the time filmmakers Glatzer and Westmoreland are done, we’re almost convinced to go along with that assessment.
But then the film is a classic example of having it both ways. It celebrates this illicit love at the same time it tsk-tsks the tawdriness at its very heart. It dissects the frailties of its characters, but never gets around to condemning these manipulative individuals.
And because it’s all based on well-documented history, the filmmakers avoid charges that they’re somehow approving of this sort of behavior. I mean, this stuff really happened, right?
What are we to make of these individuals?
Kline’s Flynn is an aging roue whose personal magnetism almost makes us look past his sagging flesh. Oufitted with ascot and moustache, Kline bears an uncanny resemblance to the big-screen Robin Hood — though he is 16 years older than Flynn was when the actor died suddenly in 1959 from liver and heart problems aggravated by his smoking and drinking. This Flynn is an individual who revels in his superficiality — he embraces an almost Wilde-ian sense of style over content.
Still, every once in a while he allows himself a moment of candor: “I’m far too old for her. But sadly she’s not too young for me.”
Sarandon’s Florence is both horrifying and fascinating, a woman willfully blind to that which she does not want to acknowledge and driven by a need to live through her daughter.
Next to these two, Fanning’s Beverly/Woodsy is little more than a fetus — albeit a fetus totally dedicated to her “Daddy.”
Looking over what’s been written here, “The Last of Robin Hood” seems like it must be a pretty good film. And yet the movie is uncomfortable, unsettling, even a bit creepy.
I was put off by the made-for-TV production values that reflect a limited budget. But even more telling, I found it impossible to overlook the morally repugnant aspects of the tale.
Call me old fashioned.
| Robert W. Butler
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