The movies Robert Redford never wants to see remade: “Left alone”
The one stand out quality of Robert Redford’s acting was purity.
In his farewell to the silver screen, The Old Man and the Gun, he didn’t hurl himself into a grand finale, but rather a charming wink that seemed to capture his earnest sentiment that less can be more. His role, no matter who he played, was to tell a great story, and that didn’t have to entail some radical accent or wild method ordeal. Silliness and showing off weren’t his style, engrossing you with characters that seemed real and relatable were more his classy mode.
In his latter years, he evidently thought that great stories were in short supply in Hollywood. He had always been a champion of independent film, but he doubled down on this as his golden hair turned grey. He spoke in defence of creative purity and figured that this was being precluded by the modern mechanisms of the industry.
“Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate mind, money is the end,” he said. Therefore, remakes were not just a sign of greater capitalist dictation over the arts, but a damaging thing for humanity. “Storytelling is important,” he also said, “part of human continuity.”
The star saw that dwindling with films that failed to reckon with society in the way they once did when he was making masterpieces like The Candidate, because profit had become the bottom line.
Sure, some remakes can be loving odes to the original, but not only was the influx too frequent for Redford’s liking, he also felt that there were some films that spoke to a particular time and place so profoundly that they should remain as they were.
Speaking at his Sundance festival in 2011, rumours were rife that Redford himself was set to direct and star in a remake of The Candidate, but he soon squashed the discussion, telling MovieMaker, “That was a great story at the time, but the more I thought about it, there’s no new story to tell there, so no.”
This was not the only movie in his discography that he thought was fixed to its perfect time and place in the world. He added, “There are certain films I think should be left alone, like The Candidate, Butch Cassidy and The Way We Were.” He adhered to the Alfred Hitchcock school of thought that if a film can happen anywhere at any time, it matters not. We are, after all, rooted to the world around us – movies should be much the same.
In part, the three films that the star mentioned became Redford’s masterpieces because they said something about the world when that point was perfectly needed. Ironically, they have remained timeless as a result. So beyond the incapability to bring something new to them, they remain fresh enough for any addition to be moot.
They were as pure as the star who made them shine, and that shouldn’t be tinkered with for the sake of a little more profit.
