Last month, I watched 10 Robert Redford movies over a six-day period at the Brattle Theatre.
Among those 10 films was The Natural.
This evening, I saw it yet again on the big screen this time at the Kendall Square Cinema.
You might ask why I would go pay money to see a 40 plus year old movie on the big screen for the second time in 25 days.
Naturally, a great deal of it has to do with Robert Redford himself. His passing has had a deep and profound effect on me. Part of it has to do with the fact that he died on my birthday.
Yet there is something else at work here. It was what he represented. From where I sit, Robert Redford represented a dignified masculinity seldom seen in our current times. That dignified masculinity showed itself in his onscreen roles and his work behind the camera and behind the scenes with the Sundance Film Festival and his efforts towards conservation. Redford didn't have to say much, but he meant what he said and backed it up.
In his portrayal of Roy Hobbs, Redford quietly seeks redemption by resuming a baseball career which was shattered before it began by an ill-fated gunshot wound 16 years earlier. While his version of Hobbs wants to seek the glory denied to him in his youth, he prefers to speak with his bat. In the course of this redemption, Hobbs is subject to temptation. While he does have a taste, he does not eat the apple.
Admittedly, the film adaptation of Bernard Malamud's novel is itself idealized. In the book, Hobbs, in the words of Rich Cohen's retrospective review in the Jewish Review of Books, "Roy Hobbs is less Robert Redford than James Gandolfini." Simply put, Hobbs succumbs to temptation and loses everything in the end. Whereas in the movie, Hobbs hits a walk off HR making all the stadium lights spontaneously explode in triumph accompanied by Randy Newman's stirring score.
While most of us will never hit a walk off HR, Redford's rendition of Roy Hobbs is something to which one can aspire. Say and do things for the right reasons, treat others well but don't suffer fools who seek to harm you. Yet this lack of sufferance need not be accompanied by anger and a loss of self-control.
There is a critical mass of men in this country who derive pleasure in the suffering of others. Some of these men start podcasts and glorify Hitler. Some of these men end up joining ICE where they get to use their authority to sow fear and intimidation through physical violence. As we saw last week in Minneapolis, that violence includes committing murder and calling the victim a "fucking bitch."
Yet it should be said that dignified masculinity occasionally shines through. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell demonstrated it when he released a videotaped statement confirming he was under DoJ investigation and that the investigation had nothing to do with any wrongful conduct but rather was simply about ending the independence of the Federal Reserve. Most importantly, Powell made his statement in a firm, plainspoken manner without a hint of anger. Through this dignified display of masculinity, Powell earned the support of several Republican Senators and his Federal Reserve predecessors. President Trump might get his way, but Powell will go out the door with his head held up high. I'm sure Powell's performance would have won rave reviews from Redford himself if he was still here to see it.
Like most people and most men, I sometimes fall short in how I comport myself. But I make a diligent effort to present the best version of Aaron Goldstein to the world each and every day. Although I cannot be anyone other than myself, I can seek guidance and inspiration from others.
Where it concerns other men, I am hard pressed to think of a better role model to pattern myself after than Robert Redford. For him, his dignified masculinity came naturally. After considerable diligence hard and work, perhaps one day this kind of dignified masculinity will come naturally to me as well.
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