Chloe Walker
Tenderness is not a quality often associated with Sean Connery, either onscreen or off. In one film, he had it to spare.
Robin and Marian sees him play the outlaw Robin Hood, who heads back to England with steadfast sidekick Little John (Nicol Williamson) after twenty years fighting for King Richard (Richard Harris) in France. Back home at last, he catches up with long-lost friends, and his former love Marian (Audrey Hepburn), now living as a nun. He also reunites with old foe the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw), who’s eager for one final showdown.
The two leads, though both hugely famous, were in very different places when they starred in the Richard Lester-directed movie. Connery had only made his last official Bond entry, Diamonds Are Forever, five years earlier, and was still enjoying a steady stream of work. Audrey Hepburn, however, hadn’t appeared on the big screen for nearly a decade, since 1967’s Wait Until Dark. A rewarding irony of Robin and Marian is that, in casting two legends to play two legends, it resulted in one of the most human-level performances of both actors’ careers – but particularly Connery’s.
When Robin first meets Marian again, he and the Merry Men have all ridden up to Kirkley Abbey, where she’s the abbess. Overcome by a bout of boyish shyness, he tries to make John go in before him, but then Marian spots him from a window, and in the long gaze they share, we can see all the history between them, and all the love that is there still.
So much of Robin and Marian is about falling into old rhythms, and whether that’s still possible when so many years have mounted up behind you. After some initial awkwardness, a touch of resentment, a spell of getting used to each other’s new appearances (Connery goes notably and rewardingly toupee-less here), Robin and Marian nestle together again as if they haven’t missed a beat in the two decades they’ve been apart.
Hepburn is luminous as ever, but because it runs so counter to his normal brutish persona, it’s the gentle awe with which Connery’s Robin regards her that stands out the most in their relationship. Late in the film, before he’s about to head out to battle, he’s monologuing about all the death he’s witnessed and how he’s been wondering what it was all for. Mid-stream, he stops suddenly, gazing at Marian. “You’re so beautiful.” he says, almost in wonder, his voice heavy with the ache of a love lost and found and probably soon to be lost again. It’s a lovely moment that he plays with breath-catching earnestness.
The rhythms of an old romance are easy enough to reclaim, but the return to battle proves harder. The actors playing Robin, the Merry Men, the kings and Nottingham are all well into their forties here, and seem it; thanks to the preponderance of heavy drinkers among the cast (Robert Shaw would die two years after the movie was released, only 51 years old), many looked older.
Still, Robin and Marian doesn’t skimp on the action sequences. As Robin and John are trying to climb the walls of Nottingham Castle early on, Robin groans, “This is murder!” When the two are later struggling to mount their horses sheathed in heavy chain mail, as they prepare to face Nottingham for the last time, Robin jokes, “This could be the hardest part of the day…”. James Goldman’s script continually grounds these legendary figures in corporeal reality, making them relatable to anyone who’s ever groaned when they moved from a sitting position to a standing one.
While Goldman finds plenty of humor in this gang of aging outlaws attempting a young man’s game, there’s melancholy there too. Death looms large throughout – in one of their early conversations, Robin and John marvel at how it hasn’t found them already. When he sees Robin again for the first time in years, Nottingham puckishly inquires, “Still not dead?” And so as Robin goes into his last showdown with him, it feels like a foregone conclusion.
There’s no humor in this fight scene. After a tender goodbye to the other great love of his life, the steadfast John, Robin and Nottingham are left alone in the middle of a field, their men watching on from afar. It’s a brutal brawl, bloody, sweaty, and gruelling. Both are already weighed down by the years and the chainmail, and it doesn’t take long for exhaustion to set in. Soon, they are effectively just falling at each other with their swords out, hoping for a hit before they can gather the energy for another strike. After all this time, is this what it’s really come down to?
Yes, but not just that. Robin and Marian concludes with the titular two together, back at the abbey. He is gravely wounded, yet happy to be with her (and John is there too, loyal as ever). The room again fills up with all those lost years, and all those tender feelings, pouring as readily as the blood from his many wounds. The fight is finally over, but the love will live on.
“Robin and Marian” is available for digital rental or purchase.
