Inside Cannes: Part Two

Facets Executive Director Milos Stehlik is at the Cannes Film Festival. His observations will appear on Facets Features all week!


Day 1: I have a headache from sitting through the press screening of Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. It’s very noisy film, filled with music-video type set-pieces filled with rousing and manipulative orchestral scores meant to build the tension in the battle scenes. Despite this noisy background and the fact that the story of this Robin Hood is kind of a prequel to all the other Robin Hoods from Douglas Fairbanks onward, there is not much that is original in Ridley Scott’s adaptation. Between the now-standard, viscerally-filmed battle scenes, there is a bit of new-pop psychology with Robin Hood (Russell Crowe), who believes his father deserted him when he was 6 years old, but actually died a noble death as a visionary of England as a land of liberty.

The film is exposition, exposition, exposition-–even in the relationship between Robin and Marian (Cate Blanchett)--no doubt to make it palatable to the entire family (though the film’s dabbling in pseudo-historical background will make it a snore not just for those under 12). It made me wish that they would, please, just get it on. No such luck. Marian is a better warrior than a lover--at least from what was on the screen.