Robert Redford's death took me by surprise. I didn't expect to die ever. It is the apanage of the great personalities to become part of our lives, especially when they belong to the most popular art – so accessible and, at the same time, so etheric. And when I die, some of us disappears, ”writes the well -known film chronicle Iulia Blaga, who, for decades, writes about movies, actors and directors, from the big festivals.
About Redford, who was 89 years old when he died, on September 16, almost the entire film population of the globe can say: “I grew up with his films.” But where does the feeling that without him be a cinema will be another? What made Redford unique, beyond talent and the fact that he was such a beautiful man?
For me, Redford was primarily an integral man, who chose the core instead of the spoia. When half of the planet's women were in love with him (the rest being in love with his good friend, Paul Newman), he refused (just like Newman) to get stuck in June-Prim roles. Not because he risked a shorter career, but because he didn't want to be swallowed by the dream plant's mixer.
That is why he was removed from Hollywood, moving to Utah, in the middle of a nature he said he liked because he is unpredictable and extreme.
He did not want to be seen as a beautiful man but, unlike Newman, whose masculinity was without the right of appeal, Redford had a softness that he knew how to take advantage. In almost everything he has played, the softness always has a steel thread and an impatience to revolt against the predetermined things.
He also had the chance to work in the most interesting and the fasting period of the American cinema, the 70's. He probably felt that it was a pity to lose.
In fact, no matter what he was playing, Redford was seeing under the character because he just from the personality and beliefs of Dospea that character. Even his negative heroes had integrity. They did not compromise, they did not give up their own beliefs, with all the risk of reaching society.
Some old -old movies
It is one of the reasons why “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (by George Roy Hill, 1969) remains one of the most beloved movies in the history of cinema and one of those old -age films. Newman and Redford performed two men outside the law, for which Bolivia remains the only liman, to whom they are being followed by unknowns that they do not see. An almost existential film; Heroes cannot get rid of their own past, but they don't die in front of our eyes. The massacre at the end, in which the image remains frozen on their falling bodies, throws them out of time – and keeps them alive, as only the cinema can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydjw2uxvsfq
Redford identified with the roles he chose and the causes he supported, especially the ecology and independent cinema (long before they become a norm), founding the Sundance Institute, which has been organizing the largest independent film festival since 1978. In the cinema he chose the projects that seemed important to him, even when he was told they would not sell. Some directed them.
At least on this occasion, “ordinary people” should be “ordinary people”, 1980), distinguished with Oscar for best movie, director (Robert Redford) and male -role (Timothy Hutton), to return to the public's attention. It is one of the best movies about dysfunctional families and a deep digging traumas. It is not only flawless (“an Oscar movie”, as they say), but it is so human by the way it gives justice to each character. Once again, Redford had intuition, long before the interest in the trauma becomes the order of the day, as it is today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqkediq79om
My collection of memories
Each of us has his memories with Robert Redford. Here are my memories:
The first meeting with him came through the postcards with actors, so fascinating for the small decree that made a collection without knowing the stars. It seemed more beautiful than Alain Delon; It was something solar and open in his figure.
The first movie I saw was the “Electric Horseman”, directed by Sydney Pollack, 1979). I was very small, I don't think I liked it (I didn't understand much), but something in his charisma came to the little girl who at that age easily identified the character with the actor. It seemed like a man equal to himself, even though he remains alone against the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge6bou2dalk
In “All the President's people” / “All the President's Men”, by Alan J. Pakula, 1976) I discovered one of the best films about what true journalism means. Here he played Bob Woodward, one of the reporters at “The Washington Post” that revealed the Watergate scandal. Redford's character was pure steel, without softness, a guy who lived for 24 of 24. Identified with the cause and without personal life or doubts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc3yfyah_yg
I can not imagine another actor in the role of Aviator Denys Finch Hatton from “away from Africa” (“Out of Africa”, by Sydney Pollack, 1985). It was so categorical in his need for freedom that you could not be on his side (not just the heroine who wanted a domestic love.). Redford knew how to give credit to this man hard to do with the foot of the table and was one of the elements for which this romantic film did not sink, but acquired a wave of nostalgia and open spaces, which is not lost.
In the last movie I saw, “The Old Man & the Gun” (by David Lowery, 2018), I found that he knew how to grow old, as opposed to younger Pacino or Niro who made questionable choices, or became sterotypes. There was something so quiet in the way he was playing without giving the impression that he was playing. This naturalness had it all the time, but the slowdown of age was, in fact, understanding the meaning of the world.
When the movie came out, Redford was nominated for the Oscar for male interpretation, as it was worth it. Other actors were the order of the day. In fact, he didn't even take the interpretation Oscar once. He received, compensatory, an honorary Oscar in 2002, and Pa.
The late film critic Adina Darian was in contact when he wrote the book “The mirage of the Golden Statuet”, before 1989, even after receiving the Oscar for “ordinary people”. “As for the prizes of the Academy, in fact my feelings have not changed. Of course, it is nice to be given an award and I am grateful to have received it, but I still do not think that a prize has to establish the work,” wrote Redford Adina Darian.
Although he had been a member of the American Film Academy (AMPAS), never voted for the Oscar, and Hollywood does not forget those who go out.
JC Chandor gave him one of the most beautiful career roles in 2013 in “All Is Lost”. At the age of 77, Redford Na had nausea to get on a project with a single character who had to stay in the water all the time. It was this, like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”, an almost existential film: the navigator of today, who remains alone in the middle of the ocean, was forced to find (or not) not only the means of survival but, above all, the motivation to fight for life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no1rl9gvx-s
Over seven years, in 2020, the death of his son, James, following a cancer, has certainly had the dimensions of a shipwreck. It was not the first, he had survived in 1959 the sudden deaths of another son, Scott, at the age of two and a half.
The only time I saw Robert Redford in the flesh and bones was at the Cannes Festival in 2013, after Chandor's press conference. I crammed into the crowd of journalists from the festival palace, massaged on both sides of the ropes that provided the guests to reach the elevator. Everyone wanted to see and photograph it, possibly to snatch an autograph.
As big as the madness was, as unbalanced was Redford's appearance. He passed in a hurry, professionally, dressed in jeans and a cadular shirt, much shorter than how he looked on the screen. Nothing in the aurele of a star, just a serious man who had come to show a movie. The scene showed me that Redford was not the star-smile star. Although he looked like a man in his place, he knew his place.
A man who had nothing to prove
In a world where everyone wants to show their value-especially when he has, Redford had nothing to prove (not even to defend), and that was completely out of the landscape.
It's hard to compare it with actors or directors of the current generation. It's like comparing an old, solid wood cabinet with a wardrobe from Ikea. In an industry in a chronic wedge of ideas and more interested than ever, today's filmmakers (actors, directories some talented) become interpreting within pre-Copter recipes. Too few have the courage to rebel or want that.
There is no pastry here: the cinema is no longer what it was and, with Robert Redford, a world goes.
