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 movie.

Thirty minutes pass before the handsome blond prisoner’s revealed as the penitentiary’s new warden, operating undercover to investigate government corruption. Of course, this title character is portrayed by Robert Redford. His slender, wiry warden detects, intervenes and negotiates strictly as necessary. He does this with inmates, government bureaucrats, police, politicians and everyone who inhabits the miserable place he’s been assigned to reform. But when everything’s rotten, reform, as President Trump learned, can be impossible.

Sometimes, one must “blow the place up and start from scratch,” as a character says in Brubaker. What happens in the sordid and absorbing tale is not so shocking, really. But there’s a twist you’re not likely to see coming. It’s powerful and silent and Mr. Redford makes the most of it. It hinges on three men: the warden, a guard and a prisoner who’s an artist. Brubaker shows why the artist entrapped in total statism is most urgently at risk. Watch the artist (a musician) in Brubaker and those who aim to destroy him versus those who want to let him play. Jane Alexander plays a woman who embodies the essence of feminism and its scheme to impose a matriarchal ruling class. The late Yaphet Kotto plays the jaded prison guard. Look, too, for Morgan Freeman’s first scene—again, mind the artist—listen for the storms and let yourself indulge in the final scene’s unforgettable cashing in on integrity as the theme.

At the beginning of Robert Redford’s career, Alec Guinness forecast that he would become a movie star. After working with him, he described the young Mr. Redford as “amusing and alert” with “a bit of a chip on his shoulder.” Brubaker affords a rare moment of vulnerability as its morality fable lifts and glides the chip off.

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Thursday with Robert Redford

The Natural