The Death Of Robin Hood

I enjoy a good retelling of fairy tales and legends. I'm not really a purist in the sense that I like an occasional updated version that changes the story to make it more applicable (The Odyssey), or one that experiments with characters to how else the story could have been (Maleficent). 

[THERE WILL BE SOME SPOILERS AHEAD]

In The Death of Robin Hood, we get a villainous Robin, one whom the tales and beer hall songs have rehabilitated. Close to the beginning, he offers this description of himself. 

"I have known those who met this man. Would you like to know a secret? He never prayed once in his life. These tales spread across the land are lies upon lies. He were a murderous brigand, who perhaps cut the throat of a sheriff in a long line of others. People saw a meaning where there was none. He was not a hero. He robbed and killed for the joy of it, nothing more… I would say if you met this villain Robin Hood, you should make haste away and keep whatever life you have left here."

Soon after - and for first part of the movie - we see that play out. He's brutal - savage, even; emotionless; uncaring of the terrible harm he causes to innocent people. It's really unsettling to watch, which I think is the point. Robin Hood is not a good person and neither are his friends.

When he wakes up at an island priory in the care of a prioress (Brigid) after nearly dying from battle wounds, we move into the most important territory of the movie. Is there hope for someone like him? Can he feel remorse? Can he be forgiven? Can he start to bring goodness into a world that he has filled with evil? 

There are signs of hope. A young girl latches on to him as a father figure, and it seems to soften his heart such that he actually starts to care about people. When he realizes a young man has snuck onto the island to enact a revenge killing, he rows the boy off the island and onto the mainland, where, rather than killing him, he gives a speech that suggests regret. 

"How many men have you killed, Godwyn? How many children have you killed? I have killed so many, I could not give you a count. For longer than you’ve been alive, I’ve been killing the kin of those I killed a lifetime ago. I do not remember the first, who meant nothing to me at the time, but… their brothers and their children, their grandchildren, they remember me. So now I must kill them. Again and again. In different forms, like shades. Again and again, and it never ceases. It’s a curse, Godwyn. And it’s one you bring on yourself, even if done through duty. It cares not about your duty. This world cares only about blood. And blood is all it will give in return."

The death of Robin Hood is at his request. I am not sure if he finally realized how much he deserved to die after hearing Brigid's story, or if he was just tired, which he noted at the beginning of the movie. In the end, he asks her to take his life (though bloodletting). This is a really uncomfortable ask, as Brigid is a healer.

Brigid: “I have never taken a life before.”

Robin: “Ah. It can be as if pruning a flower.”

Bridgid: “Well, it should not be.”

Robin: “Aye, it should not.”

But it is, for Robin Hood. Though he does no violence on the island, he threatens it. He told Godwyn that if he came back to island he would slit his throat and never think of him again. I don't think he was kidding.  

I have mixed feelings about the end. Is what he asked Brigid to do one final monstrous thing by having a healer kill him and then comfort her family's killer as he dies? Or is he allowing her to be the hands of justice long overdue so something can settle in her? I don't know. You could probably convince me to go either way. Maybe that kind of ambiguity is intentional, forcing the viewer to wrestle with how they are feeling in that moment. (For example, I thought that was too good of a death. Then I wondered why I would begrudge someone a good death. It didn't feel like justice, but it sure felt like mercy, and I am a fan of both. So.....)

However, the updates to this legend felt timely. 

I thought of Jeffrey Epstein and Andrew Tate, two men who - depending where you get your news or social media updates - were men to be admired. Tate had a HUGE following of young men who deeply admired him while he was doing terrible, terrible things to women. Egocasting lets people live in an information bubble where they only hear what they want to hear. Meanwhile, beware those who whitewash the lives of people, and by so doing allow the monstrous things they do to continue. 

I thought also of how well this movie showed how cycles of violence are perpetuated. "Their brothers and their children, their grandchildren, they remember me. So now I must kill them. Again and again." Violence begets violence. Revenge perpetuates revenge. And as it kills the victims it damages the perpetrators until taking a life is as easy as pruning a flower. 

Someone has to stop that cycle. The Leper did. Brigid did too by becoming a healer. It looks like little Margaret is heading toward a path of peace. 

Perhaps that is where the hope is in this movie. It's not so much in Robin Hood, though the changes for the good we see in his weeks at the priory suggest a hopeful trajectory. I think it's more in those around him who have dedicated their lives to goodness in a way that is utterly foreign to him. 

The meek - whom he dismissed in the beginning - have outlasted him. Perhaps they will, in the end, inherit the earth.