Immersing herself in the world of Robin Hood alongside one of contemporary cinema’s most productive filmmaking teams, Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe, was an awe inspiring experience says Cate Blanchett.
The Oscar winning actress plays the feisty Lady Marion Loxley, a woman who will defend her home and fight for her family, opposite Crowe as Robin Longstride, a battle hardened archer who returns to 12th century England to find a country on the brink of civil war.
- What was it like making this epic film?
It was utterly surprising. When you are about to work with Ridley and Russell, there’s going to be a lot of testosterone on set and so you brace yourself, but they were incredibly fine, detailed, welcoming and good humoured.
I expected it to be heavier going but it was the most glorious summer. The weather in England was superb, there’s nothing like a wonderful English summer day and we were filming in some of the most beautiful parts of the country like Windsor Great Park.
Then Russell brought along this really fantastic band of Merry Men who kept everyone entertained, including my children.
- Surprising in what way?
Well for me growing up, the Robin Hoods I’d seen had been Douglas Fairbanks and of course Errol Flynn who was another Australian. It’s interesting that two Australians have played the role.
I think there’s an outsider’s perspective from us Antipodeans - we understand the outlaw’s perspective maybe inherently and deeply and Russell certainly does.
He’s very outside the norm and is often getting into trouble but he’s also got an incredibly strong ability to access really deep and soulful emotions and so this is not an inconsequential Robin Hood, it’s a soul searching Robin Hood that he’s created.
So for my money, after this film, I think you’ll remember Errol Flynn and you’ll remember Russell.
- What’s the biggest challenge with a film like this?
Gosh, I think it’s a filmmaker’s challenge really. Harnessing all of those, if you’ll pardon the pun, horses and extras. It was epic in its ambitions. Not only an epic story but epically rendered. From my perspective I suppose always when you go back in time to tell a story you want it to be relevant.
Like, why make Robin Hood now? I think it deals so much with villages in England being depleted by the taxation that was imposed ruthlessly by King John.
The notion of being over taxed and not trusting the banking system and wanting someone to come in and steal from the rich to give back to the poor and to defend the great unwashed, as we all are, I think Robin Hood is a champion who people will really want to see again in cinemas at the moment.
- So in that regard the theme is contemporary...
It is. I also think that the time when this story sprang to life was when Pagan values and being connected to the earth was being challenged by crusading for God, gathering wealth in God’s name, pillaging and plundering in God’s name and I think what Marion and Robin Hood and his Merry Men find is a different way of existing outside of that framework which is the greenwood.
- In a lot of Robin Hood films in the past Marion is a very passive character
Yes, I don’t even remember Marion. Of course I remember all of those beautiful pre-Raphaelite images of women like Marion in the medieval period but I don’t really remember Marion’s function in the story apart from being rescued or to look exquisitely beautiful and I’m neither one in this film (laughs).
I’m quite dirty and of the Earth. And I think there’s probably a healthy dose of Ridley’s own personality in Marion.
- Did that appeal, the fact that she is pro-active rather than passive in the story?
Well, at no behest of mine that was an ambition of Ridley’s he wanted her to be an equal match for Robin, someone who could give Russell a run for his money.
So I hope I’ve done that. My main thing was that I wanted to work with them both and I would have done anything that Ridley asked me to.
- You also get to fire a flaming arrow. What was that like?
Oh my goodness, the fiery arrow was my first night on set. People have asked me ‘well, what was your preparation?’ and really I got on set and Ridley said ‘I want you to fire this arrow...’
I had 45 minutes to learn it and then I arrived ready to do the close up and he said ‘oh, it’s going to be alight’ and so then I suddenly had to fire a flaming arrow.
My eight-year-old son was there and I couldn’t lose face in front of him so I really focused and fortunately it left the bow and then hit a light and exploded so it was all very dramatic. I did it once but I’m not sure I could have done it again! (laughs).
- You must have ridden horses for films before?
Yes, I made a western with Ron Howard where I was riding every day. When I started that film I was bouncing all around in the saddle but I rode every day so I got better.
I’m not the horseman that Russell is and I’m riding film horses but I absolutely love it. I do love being on a horse.
- There’s an incredible sequence at the end of the film that I believe was shot on a beach in Wales. Tell me about that...
Wales is an exquisitely beautiful part of the UK and naively I thought ‘well, why is New South Wales in Australia called that?’ And I went to Wales and saw these beaches and thought ‘of course...’ because there’s a real similarity there.
But the beach we shot on was quite dangerous actually, quite beautiful but it’s incredibly tidal. So the tide was moving and we had to wait to a certain time of day to even shoot and then the tide would move five or six metres every minute or two and so Ridley had this incredible set up with about 40 boats and about five million extras and horses and so we would just get a take and then the whole thing would have to move five or six metres up the beach and start again. It was really difficult.
But you should see Ridley in those situations, he’s like a pig in mud, he comes alive. He is very fine and very detailed in terms of his direction of performance but then he is able to direct action like nobody else. He’s incredible.
- Tell me about the Russell and Ridley dynamic on set
Russell and Ridley together are a little bit like George and Martha. They argue, they love one another deeply, they respect one another like nobody’s business and they bring out the best in one another; that’s why they keep working together.
And they are an amazing duo to watch, one talks and the other one listens, they argue and the other talks, the other listens, and they get down and do it and it’s always about making things better.
- Had you seen any other Robin Hood films in preparation?
No, I hadn’t seen any in preparation. I grew up with Errol Flynn playing Robin Hood and now being a mother of three boys my children have been watching the BBC television version.
They’ve also seen the one with the foxes, the animated Disney version. There are many versions, one for every generation and you can ask ‘well, why tell this story now?’
But if you look at the current climate and how we all feel, the world is so bad and corrupt and we feel so powerless within it, I think we are all looking towards an outsider, a hero, to come and save the day and Robin Hood’s that.
- It is an enduring myth
Yes and various incarnations. Shakespeare makes reference to it in As You Like It. It’s that notion of the Green Man, the camouflaged man, the man who is outside society looking in, who exists in a very different sort of framework.
And I think that’s the wonderful thing about the film Ridley has made, they return to the green wood and it’s a very powerful force, its nature, it’s a different way of being.
- Is it a very different acting experience when it’s a big film like this?
This was a big one! (laughs).
- But is it different or is the job essentially the same?
Well, you’ve got to show up, you’ve got to deliver and it’s got to be the best you can do so in that sense it’s always the same. But I’ve never been on a film this big. I was a part of the Indiana Jones film and that was extraordinary and huge but it was a very different ambition.
I haven’t done that many big films and I am glad that I haven’t to this point in my career because I think if I’d done them any earlier I’d have been really dwarfed by them.
There is so much technology, action, colour and movement that I think I probably would have got lost whereas I think now I have a greater sense of how I can be part of it.
But I’m still awed by it and I’m awed by filmmakers like Ridley who are able to focus on minute details in the frame and be really engaged in the performances plus know that the performances carry the action and make people connect to the story.
When you watch him direct the action, he is just extraordinary and so good humoured. The tide is moving five metres every five seconds it seemed on that beach in Wales and there’s Ridley stomping around in his Wellingtons like a pig in mud really enjoying himself.
I think a lot of other directors would have got extremely stressed and yell whereas he just went with the flow and I think that’s just because he is such a master at it.
- The incredible Nottingham set that was built for the movie must have helped get into character...
Incredible. Arthur Max who did the production design is legendary. I had such a great conversation with him about how he was trying to preserve craftsmanship in England, crafts that were getting lost various ways of knotting and weaving and laying stones.
He said it was really difficult to find people who knew how to do these things and build them in the way that things used to be built. So it’s a great thing when a film can bring back and re-invigorate those crafts
Robin Hood is out on DVD now.
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