The Never-Say-Die Regality Of Robert Redford

FOR CINEPHILES, he had the aura of a movie star. For fans, he had the gravity of a storyteller. For Hollywood, he had the independence of a striver. For people, he had the generosity of a humanitarian. For women, he had the charisma of a man. For men, he had the presence of a leader. He was ahead of his time as an American and defied the idea of time as a celebrity. He was everything, everywhere, all at once. He was Robert Redford: a reel and real hero so perfectly assembled that he entertained, reflected and changed the world at once. A crusader of art as disruption and evolution as art, he quietly influenced generations of lovers, livers, doers and dreamers. He was always, wholly, Robert Redford.

Redford was the kind of larger-than-life-but-also-charmer-next-door figure who was remembered even when he was alive. He was remembered for who he was, what he represented, how he carried himself, who he cared for, when he spoke, and why he existed. He was a living memory even as he used cinema as a medium to do more. To know more. To create and share more. To use tradition as a catalyst for modernity. Now that he’s gone, he is impossible to forget. His legacy is such that he belongs to anything we consume, admire or anguish about: fiction, fascism, activism, politics, humanity. When I was a child, his face was the first I imagined when people spoke of fame and stardom. If my dad mentioned James Bond, for some reason, I thought of Redford. If my dad mentioned Woodhouse, Eastwood or The Beatles, I thought of Redford without realising it too. 

He had that sort of malleable and for-all-sizes-and-ages aura. When I finally watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I wondered if there could be a better descriptor of him than “dancing with the Sun”. I watched his films over the years, most of them classics, but I was struck by the way he played Gatsby as an extension of himself. There was a sense of familiarity and authenticity (we like to believe we knew him), an understated charisma, that he brought to his portrayal of everyman heroism. It often felt like he was trying to normalise his obvious physical gifts instead of accepting them as an artistic disadvantage. When we watch Brad Pitt these days, the resemblance is uncanny, but Redford’s performances were always rooted in a humility that rarely came naturally to his Hollywood successors.

When I started working as a journalist and realised that I couldn't look like I was thinking the way Redford did in All The President's Men, a Sundance Film Festival grant changed my understanding of cinema as a medium of diversity. (I also had that tubelight moment: “Oooh, the Sundance kid actually started Sundance!”). Most of us didn’t realise it, but he had empowered not just independent artists of film, but of journalism and film-adjacent writing too. It’s not often that someone of the stature of Redford manages to filter his compassion to the farthest corners of the globe through a community experience like that. He didn’t even need to be present to be associated with the courage of creating, thinking and expressing in the modern age.

We’re spoilt for choice in terms of Robert Redford, the actor. However, for some reason, perhaps because I only watched the classics in the late 2000s, two of his late-career performances have remained with me. Redford, as an old-timer, is the Redford I grew to love and anticipate in real time. In fact, they were his last two feature-length films. The first was Ritesh Batra’s Our Souls At Night, an adaptation of Kent Haruf’s novel, where an 80-something Redford plays a widower in Colorado who cheats on loneliness with his newly widowed neighbour (Jane Fonda), only for them to face disapproval about their ‘relationship’ from her family. He plays the man like a teenager who’s gone ahead in time — stoic, hopeful, but strangely vulnerable — to enter an ‘illicit’ equation with another heartbroken person. It’s a reverse-love story, almost, and the idea of Redford playing a flawed griever (his character was unfaithful in marriage, but it doesn’t tarnish our perception of his loyalty) is difficult to resist. At some point, it almost feels like he isn’t really ‘fighting’ for a happily ever after because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it. It’s an alarmingly dignified performance — one that signalled the twilight of living without being morbid about it.

Ditto for Redford in The Old Man & the Gun, arguably his best and most profound work on the big screen. As an enigmatic 70-something career criminal and escape artist, Redford infuses the role with a literary warmth; it’s like watching him and interpreting the words describing the character at once. The compulsive bank robber with principles (no pulling the trigger of his gun) tries to be ‘normal’ when he falls for a woman and spends time on her farm. Still, Redford turns it into a love triangle between him, a regular sunset and the thrill of missing a sunrise. Escaping is the literalisation of escapism for him; breaking out is his version of breaking free and feeling alive. There’s a lot of humanity in Redford’s depiction of what could’ve been a conventionally colourful anti-hero. It’s like watching an artist announcing his retirement only to keep relapsing. It’s also like watching a legend die but continuing to live on.