Thursday with Robert Redford

Brubaker (1980)

For another fine dramatization of integrity starring Robert Redford, Brubaker stands out. This often wordless prison picture about the refusal to “sell out” one’s principles features an excellent cast and screenplay dramatizing a coarse, realistic study of America’s decline. Brubaker, which ultimately pans back to show the world at large, foreshadows the times in which we live.

The 1980 film, “suggested by” a book by Thomas O. Murton (who was an adviser) and Joe Hyams, delivers a tonic. With music composed by Lalo Schifrin, the story ends and begins in a prison. One man may break free. Brubaker, which casts a woman’s betrayal at the center, dares to ask who is free and who is incarcerated and it’s the presumed prisoner who throws down the challenge. Like the Klaus Kinski character in David Lean’s 1965 masterpiece Doctor Zhivago, a very different type of film, inner fortitude—the emancipated spirit—devotion to achieving what Ayn Rand called “the best within” is central in this unusual m…