DC Film Society: Adam's Rib October 2025

More Than a Natural

Of the many testimonials about Robert Redford since his recent passing, the one that struck me most was filmmaker Richard Linklater declaring that “People take Redford for granted.” On the surface this seems like a strange thing to say about someone who had been a rich and famous for over 55 years. He was one of those stars that was always there. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and The Sting were ever present in my family growing up. The Natural defined for me what a baseball movie was. “Natural” seemed to capture Redford in many ways, starting with his good looks and seemingly effortless charm. Being a movie star just seemed so easy for him. Later I learned about the Sundance Institute and Film Festival, both of which he started, but I looked at them as institutions.

The more I think about Redford the more I believe Linklater has a valid point. Redford never won an acting Oscar and was only nominated once. He rarely had an emotional “ACTING” scene like fellow 70s stars Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino did. He didn’t have a singular style: Have you ever heard anyone perform a Robert Redford impression? Much of what he did was internal, absorbing what was going on around him and reacting. That focus may not have been flashy, but it was critical for many of his signature roles.

I wrote about Redford in 2014, noting that he often played a good man struggling to maintain his values in a corrupt world. Think The Candidate, Three Days of the Condor, All the President’s Men, Brubaker, or even The Natural. Taking that idea a step further, he represented a need to dig deeper under the surface, to find the unnerving underbelly below that facile façade. It could be campaign politics, intelligence, the White House, prisons, or baseball. As a director, he took the same critical eye to the American family in Ordinary People (for which he won his only competitive Oscar). Redford’s pinnacle as a director, Quiz Show, best exemplified this drive, compellingly examining television through the 1950’s game show scandals.

Sundance, which I grew up with as part of the film world, came at just the right time. Hollywood was moving away from the grittier 70s films to the blockbuster-centered 1980s. Redford was not from the indie film world, far from it. He thrived in the mainstream, but he saw a need elsewhere. He saw talented storytellers that didn’t have much money or studio deals. So many of the films and filmmakers I loved, especially in the 90s, came at least in part from Sundance. Back when diversity was not a bad word, it meant something to Redford and his team. Women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ filmmakers were welcomed as were emerging talent from other countries. When some of the Sundance-assisted directors hit it big, Redford never once claimed any credit for himself.

Even in his environmental advocacy Redford did it an understated way. He lent his fame and profile for the cause, but he never claimed to be an expert. He put front and center scientists and policymakers and worked with them to protect America’s beauty, its air and its water.

How ironic that Redford left us just as so many of the values he stood for are under attack. Instead of subtlety, we have self-aggrandizement. Instead of critical examinations, we have surface-level social media bytes. Serious journalism, which Redford championed, seems to get rarer every day. Certainly, environmental stewardship is fading fast. In a recent interview, Bob Woodward, who Redford notably played in All the President’s Men, said that Redford expressed alarm about the state of the nation. Even Sundance has an uncertain future as it moves from Redford’s home base in Utah to Colorado. Independent filmmakers are having as tough a time as they have ever had since the festival’s heyday. We will always have Redford’s movies, but perhaps the rest of his legacy is left to us.

Adam Spector
October 1, 2025