Film Review: Kevin Kline captures Errol Flynn’s waning years
In the wonderful comedy “My Favorite Year,” Peter O’Toole played Alan Swann, a character plainly based on screen icon Errol Flynn. Confronted with the realization that his upcoming TV appearance is going out live — ergo, no retakes — the panicked Swann utters the memorable phrase, “I’m not an actor, I’m a movie star!”
In the new film “The Last of Robin Hood” (written and directed by the team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland), Flynn is portrayed by Kevin Kline, who is quite the opposite — far more an actor than a movie star.
Through flashbacks, the film follows the last two years of Flynn’s life, focusing on his romantic relationship with Beverly Aadland (Dakota Fanning), who was 15 at its start, and her stage mother, Florence (Susan Sarandon), whose subsequent memoir provides the framework for the film’s point of view.
In 1958, a year and a half before his death, Flynn — even today the unchallenged king of swashbuckling Hollywood stars — himself had portrayed John Barrymore in a biopic of the latter’s daughter Diana. His casting was perfect, ghoulish, and ironic: Flynn — a great screen presence gone to seed through substance abuse and rowdy living — playing his late friend Barrymore, during the period of his similar deterioration. The irony is compounded by the fact that it was one of Flynn’s few non-heroic roles and suggested — to the surprise of some — that he really could act.
Kline has played swashbucklers himself at least twice before: first, in one of his earliest movies, “The Pirates of Penzance”; and second, in “Chaplin,” where he was a convincing Douglas Fairbanks, Flynn’s predecessor in the genre. But it’s impossible to think of Kline in the same manner as Flynn; the former is, here as always, an actor of remarkable range, who disappears into every role he essays. No one ever refers to “a Kevin Kline sort of character.”
Flynn was — to his financial benefit and spiritual detriment — quite the opposite. It was not simply that he was associated with a certain kind of role; it was also that his private life was a darker version of the same persona. On screen, he was heroic, honorable, romantic, and sexually compelling; off screen, he was neither heroic nor honorable nor necessarily even romantic. However, his sexual escapades — most notoriously leading to statutory rapes charges, of which his eventual acquittal was thanks to “shaming” tactics that probably wouldn’t be permitted today — led to the phrase “In like Flynn.”
Kline conveys the same self-deprecating charm that O’Toole brought to “My Favorite Year.” When Beverly first describes herself as a dancer/singer/actor, he says, “A triple threat! I never could dance myself or sing”...and then takes no offense when someone else mutters “...or act.” It is mentioned that Flynn had considered titling his memoir (published as “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”) “In Like Me.”
Some issues are only hinted at in the movie. We see Flynn shooting up, without knowing quite precisely whether the drug is an upper, a downer, a legitimate medication, or something like Vitamin B. (In real life, Flynn apparently compounded his heavy smoking and heavier drinking with heroin and other opiates by the end.) There are many interesting aspects of his life that the filmmakers could not make room for.
In large part, this is because of the dominance of Florence Aadland’s perspective. Sarandon is totally convincing as a justifiably frustrated woman, living out her ambitions through her daughter. It’s a sign of our changing expectations of age that the real Florence was nearly 20 years younger at the time than Sarandon is, and looked roughly 20 years older. Fanning is perfectly adequate in a role that gives her far less to work with.
The whole is enjoyable and effective, despite production values that suggest a modest, premium-cable sort of budget.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).