The Power of Stories: A Conversation with ‘The Death of Robin Hood’ Writer-Director Michael Sarnoski

Grappling with his past after a life of crime and murder, Robin Hood finds himself gravely injured after a battle he thought would be his last. In the hands of a mysterious woman, he is offered a chance at salvation.

Quiet brutality. That’s what you’re left with after watching Michael Sarnoski’s latest film The Death of Robin Hood. It’s a brooding, bloody, and oddly cathartic viewing experience (no spoilers, but that ending… you’ll see). The film also makes you feel like you’re right there in the characters skin, as they fight, as they wonder and wander – it’s almost as if you can feel the wind against your face on the land of which the priory sits. And that’s just one of the many layers of feeling and reactions you’ll (hopefully) take away from this film.

Michael Sarnoski discussed with Script his process in exploring the complex relationship between Robin Hood and the prioress, Sister Brigid, challenging traditional narratives, the importance of storytelling and balance – both thematically and in his writing process. Plus, he highlights his creative collaborations with Hugh Jackman and Jodie Comer, and his cinematographer Pat Scola.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: There's definitely a lot of thematic elements at play here, but before we get into all of that, what was it about this character, Robin Hood, that made you want to dig deeper into the humanity, or maybe the lack thereof of humanity in this character, and flipping that lore on its head?

Michael Sarnoski: I read “The Death of Robin Hood” legend as a kid - I think I read it when I was like 10 years old. I got this little book of just all the Robin Hood stories, and you get to the last chapter and it's Robin Hood's death... I think, especially for a kid, there was something so shocking about that, in that, like, wait a minute, I think of him as the guy with the bow and arrow, and he's running around in green tights and having a grand old time, but then he dies quietly in a sunlit church bedroom. Trying to understand that was weird as a kid, and I think I was fascinated by it, and it stuck with me for apparently 30 years.

I think one thing that always I found interesting was that I wanted to sort of break down that relationship between the prioress and Robin a little bit more, because in the legend it's very much the prioress is kind of this evil nun and Robin is the goodly hero, and to bloodlet someone to death in a bedroom feels so intimate. I wanted to understand what that relationship was, and it didn't feel as simple as how the story portrayed it.

So, I really wanted to kind of explore those two characters and think about, OK, what is the humanity behind this prioress, and maybe she's not some evil nun, maybe she's a healer, and maybe she has a community unlike a lot of places back then, and it's a place where lepers and orphans can come, and she's kind of incredible.

And maybe Robin wasn't the sweet, goodly hero that we think of. And maybe there's more to his story, and maybe he was a medieval bandit, in the way you would think a medieval bandit was, like a pretty brutal guy. So it sort of started from that, just wanting to examine this relationship and this moment in more depth, and then it all sort of unfolded from that.

Sadie: There’s a word that stood out to me, and I believe she even says it a few times – “balance”. The idea of balance between their characters and how that comes into play. And for you as a writer, and your writing process, how were you finding and implementing that balance – it’s a big thing.

Michael: What she talks about in the movie, is very much about storytelling. She's talking about the power of stories, and she's talking about balance. And she talks about how “knives cut bread as well as they do flesh,” meaning Robin is someone who's used storytelling as a weapon, as... violence, and she's someone who's using storytelling as a healing thing... she's using religion and stories to try and open people up and give people peace.

And for me, I try to find that balance as organically as possible. When I'm writing, I really like to start with a non-judgmental vomit pass, where I really just like get everything out, and I know it's going to be crummy, but I can have it there, so that I can then sort of start editing it and start reading it, and thinking, ‘OK, 80% of this doesn't make any sense, but 20% of this is really resonating with me,’ and maybe it's not the 20% I thought it would be. There's some theme or something that's in this story that I want to expand upon, and I try to sort of let the story grow naturally, and figure out what it wants to be, and sort of tell me what it wants to be.

I think a lot of people say my movies are like subversive in the sense of it's taking some sort of genre, like a revenge movie, and then it doesn't go the direction you think it would go. And a lot of that doesn't really come from me planning that, it's often that I'm really trying to get into the heads of these characters and expand upon them in a way that feels organic to me, and then they just sort of like naturally want to go in a different place that feels like an ending that sort of is surprising but earned for those characters. So, I try to just kind of let the script become what it wants to be without judging it too much, and then my is job to shepherd that and then shape it and then give it the refinement that it needs to make sense and to get those ideas across.

Sadie: Once your casting was locked in with, Jodie Comer and Hugh Jackman, both phenomenal at their craft - what kind of conversations were you having with them to make sure they’re landing those emotional beats and how you’d capture that visually?

Michael: I always say that as a director, most of my directing is writing the screenplay, and then casting actors, especially casting actors who understand the screenplay. Really a lot of that becomes just conversations about the script, and conversations about these characters and their history.

Jodie and Hugh both really loved the script, and the voice of these characters, and they were fascinated by the philosophical things, and they wanted to talk about, ‘where is this coming from, and what's the history behind that?’ And so a lot of it just becomes finding people that are really excited by the script, and really understand it on a deep emotional level.

A lot of that just came from like just seeing how Hugh and Jodie really understood those characters and understood the material, because it's also pretty morally ambiguous… and to find actors that are excited by that, and are excited that there's an ambiguity to what is this that's happening between these two people, is this love, is this hate, finding people that are like excited by sort of breaking that apart and figuring it out, that's 90% of the battle.

Sadie: There’s several scenes where we see a very particular dilemma for Robin and then Randall, and without going into too much spoiler territory, the scene at Edward's house, Robin has the dilemma of fighting to save the family or take on one last epic battle.

Michael: That's sort of like the running through line, this is a story about Robin, sort of seeking his right death, he's kind of outlived his time, his folklore is catching up with him, the legend is taking over the man,  he should have died years ago, he should have been hanged in the town square, but he's such a fighter and such a survivor, that he wants someone to kill him at the beginning. He goes to fight with Little John, because he's like, ‘this could be it, this could be the big, exciting ending that I've been expecting for myself.’

And that's in some ways what the audience is expecting, is that big, exciting battle that's going to be the end of Robin Hood, and then kind of what he finds is what that thing that he's seeking, that right death is, is the rest of the movie becomes a discovery of that it might be something different than what he ever expected, and it might come from a place of love and connection in a way that he's never experienced it before.

Sadie: Your collaboration with your cinematographer, Pat Scola - he has a very specific lens, and he seems very comfortable in capturing these moments and letting the performance do the work and not the camera doing too much. And with this film specifically, it’s so great how we see and get information – like a dirty OTS where a brutal fight is happening in the background. Just some really great framing. What was your guys’ process in finding that tone, especially for fight sequences?

Michael: I've done all of my movies with Pat - this is our third time working together. Our work on set… half of it happens silently now… something will happen, and we just like look at each other, and we're like, ‘yeah’ and we just sort of like do hand motions, and that's it. [laughs] It's become very second nature, but a lot of that comes from planning.

Our first thing that we do is we sit down, have a bottle of wine, and talk through the movie, and talk about what's exciting us, what we're thinking. And then we move into shot listing the whole movie - we shot list the entire movie from beginning to end, and we go through the whole script, and by the end, we make a spiral bound notebook that has a shot list for the entire movie. I would say, it ends up being 95% that shot list.

On the day we like to do a blocking rehearsal and see if something new is discovered in the performances, and then we try to remain open, in the moment, but we have a pretty clear sense of what we're doing. A lot of that just comes from talking and knowing what excites us and knowing what we're trying to communicate.

This was actually the hardest movie to shot list, it took the longest, I think, because Pig and Quiet Place are both kind of linear A to B movies... but in this movie it's a little more cyclical, and you come back to this bed chamber multiple times, and so we spent a lot of time talking about, how are we going to shoot this bed chamber scene, but make it feel new, and make it feel like it's sort of exploring something different, and we're not shooting it the same way as the other thing.

Same with these fight scenes. We wanted each one to sort of have a different feel to itself. We just spent a lot of time thinking about what we were trying to communicate. Pat was thinking a lot about paintings. We have an aspect ratio change in this movie, where the first quarter is in 2:3:9 and that's sort of the epic, this is what you think a Robin Hood movie should look like, and it's very expansive. And then we move into 1:6:6 when we go to the priory, and that's kind of more square, it's really great for like close-ups on faces... and also l makes things airier, and sort of like opens up the space, and it feels spiritual and a little heavenly.

We had a lot of these formal discussions, but then we just basically talk a lot and s treat it as like 'no bad idea,' and we're both very supportive of each other creatively, and also don't take any shit from each other [laughs]... that's why I value having him on set so much, is that he's the first one who's going to be like, ‘You are talking nonsense right now, Michael, take a step back.’ And that's great to have people around you that will keep you in check. We have a very honest, open relationship that way.

Sadie: The fight sequences, particularly the stabbing – the finalization of ‘yes, that guy is definitely dead.’ It’s grotesque, it’s brutal, but it feels like the most honest fighting I’ve seen in movies in a long time. Was that something originally written in the script or discovered through your discussions with your stunt choreographer?

Michael: It's a combination of a lot of things. One of the initial jumping off points for all of the action was I was watching a series of lectures about medieval English history, and there was this great quote that the professor said, and she said, ‘We think of medieval battles as knights in shining armor, riding around on horses. And when really, most of the time, it was just peasants beating each other to death with shovels.’

That was the feeling we wanted to capture. These are just old men rolling around in the mud, trying desperately not to die, and to kill the other person first, and using whatever is around them to smother this person. I think sort of that relentless side of the fighting comes from that. Like, no, this isn't someone doing backflips and kung fu... I think that was one of the things that most excited Hugh about this was this is not going to be  superhero action, like I love some superhero action, but we're gonna approach these action scenes more like a war movie or even a horror movie.

Every stab you're gonna feel, and it's gonna get under your skin. And so we tried to make it very personal and very desperate and visceral. So, even simple things like people getting stabbed through their hands or shot in the eye with an arrow... there's something very personal about that, that just kind of is hard to ignore.

The violence comes from the intensity of those moments, and someone just beating someone to death until their head is pulp, comes from that desperation and anger. We just really wanted to capture all of that and make sure that it felt sloppy in the right way, but still very pointed and severe.

That was a slow process of like working with the stunt coordinators and really paring down these scenes, something kind of essential and primal, and then finding ways to shoot them that were kind of patient in certain ways. We didn't get really cutesy, we weren't trying to do oners, but we kind of shot a lot of things as if they would be oners. You just kind of want to feel like you're just there plodding through the mud with them, because I wanted to feel like you were stuck with these characters in these brutal moments. I really want people to leave the first chunk of the movie, 'please stop showing me this horrible stuff.' And so then when you get to the prior, it's like, ‘Oh, thank God, I can take a breath.’

The Death of Robin Hood is now in Theaters.