Sean Connery On Age and Dignity

1001 Movies To Watch Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part 38
John Huston, The Man Who Would Be King
Richard Lester, Robin and Marian

The 1970s saw Scottish actor Sean Connery taking an unusual chance in mainstream movies: he got old. Though only in his forties, he retired from playing James Bond, allowed himself to go bald onscreen, and took roles playing men facing the reality of age. Two of those movies got shoved into the niche of boyish period pieces, which is unfair, because they’re two of the best films he ever created.

1975’s The Man Who Would Be King starred Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer, directed by John Huston. That should’ve been enough to secure classic status alone. But it also derived from a Rudyard Kipling novella, originally written in praise of English colonialism, which revisited Kipling’s themes from a perspective of realizing the empire was already doomed. The themes derived are massive.

Connery and Caine play former British NCOs, veterans of the Anglo-Afghan wars. Retired and bored, they adopt that classic British hobby: exploration. They wander into an Afghan province so remote, no outsider has conquered it since Alexander the Great. Warring clans have spent two millennia battling over Alexander’s legacy, a battle into which our heroes inadvertently stumble. When an arrow fails to kill Connery, they take him for a god.

Former enemy clans band together, believing Connery to be Alexander’s heir, a king heralded by prophecy, and Caine his emissary. The two morally dissipated British establish their petty empire on false promises, misuse of religion, and greed. Fat on conquest, with the province’s treasury at their disposal, Caine suggests absconding to England and living off their proceeds. Connery, however, has begun believing his own snake-oil pitch.

Class matters in this story. The Scottish Connery and the Cockney Caine, poor outsiders in Britain, find themselves monarchs in Afghanistan. Connery dreams of meeting Queen Victoria as an equal. Caine, meanwhile, finds himself torn between conflicting moralities: he’s a common adventurer, who subsidizes his thrill-seeking with crime. But he’s also a Freemason, which binds him to specific loyalties. Being viceroy jeopardizes both.

Sean Connery and Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King

In 1976, Connery revisited similar themes in Robin and Marian. Directed by Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night), and featuring an all-star cast, including Audrey Hepburn, Richard Harris, Ian Holm, and Robert Shaw, this film features similar motifs of reconsidering childhood myth in adulthood. This time, the myth is Robin Hood, grown old and disillusioned after his outlaw days are over. He’s too old for glory, too young to die.

Robin has discovered King Richard is as venal and corrupt as the Prince he once fought against. After King Richard dies ignominiously, Robin returns to Sherwood, unsure of his virtue. There he finds his Merry Men have become common horse thieves, and Maid Marian has joined a convent. With Prince John elevated to king, old grudges are liberated to fight again. Except for one impediment: the Sheriff of Nottingham won’t have it.

King John attempts to restore his greedy iron hand over England’s North, while Robin attempts to rebuild his Merry Men. Robin wants to turn the clock back ten years: violence, romance, and justice. He wants Marian to rejoin him in the forest. Marian, however, is sincere in her monastic vows, and attempts to broker peace between the parties. Robin literally punches her and drags her back to Sherwood Forest.

In contrast, the Sheriff of Nottingham appears downright genial. He refuses the king’s men access to his shire, preferring to enforce law locally—and is strategic in which laws he enforces. Robin and Nottingham have different visions, based on whether they live in the present or the past. They also have different experiences with their battle, because they’re getting old. Both find themselves tuckered out after relatively short clashes.

These two historical dramas reflect different points in British history, but share important themes. Both take periods famous for myth-making and national glory, and view them through a post-imperial eye. They both, in essence, admit that Britain will keep fighting wars it’s already won, until it exhausts itself and, by winning the war, loses the peace. The end result of great national glory, these movies imply, is national disappointment.

But despite their ponderous themes, these movies are also great fun to watch. They display Connery, a man clearly relishing the transitions of time, just being an old man enjoying the push forward. Both movies mix their pontifical messages with dry humor, splendorous landscapes, and beautifully choreographed fight scenes. Yes, they admit, the empire was always doomed to fail. But didn’t we live a full life on the way there?