Who Knew Murray Bartlett Could Act Like This?

Slight spoilers follow for The Death of Robin Hood, now in theaters.

The Death of Robin Hood is a story you haven’t seen before with some elements you have. As Robin Hood, Hugh Jackman is in Logan mode, a grizzled and exhausted warrior who’s done all kinds of murderous acts he’d rather forget. Jodie Comer once again finds herself living on a remote island, à la 28 Years Later, and trying to be free of crummy men, not unlike The Last Duel. Bill Skarsgård, bless him, ports Pennywise’s voice onto his version of Little John. Even as these pieces are rearranged into a hyperviolent analysis of the Robin Hood myth, a lot of this will look familiar — except for the best part of the movie. The best part of the movie is Murray Bartlett’s wise leper, a man who for the vast majority of his screen time is covered head to toe. You won’t recognize Bartlett’s face or his voice, you’ll be shocked to see his name in the credits, and you’ll be moved to tears by his performance.

In a movie that is about the make-believe myths we tell to feel better about the cruelty of our world, Bartlett’s leper is an example of the kind of impact an individual can make, a person whose name will be lost to history but whose actions will be remembered by those who knew him in life. He’s a perfect foil to, and the inverse of, Robin Hood himself, whom the film hammers home as a rogue less bothered by his decades of looting and killing than by the cycles of retribution that keep following him around. Everywhere Robin Hood goes, there’s another young person who recognizes him as the killer of their uncle, grandfather, or village elder. Robin Hood’s fame is like a boomerang, coming back at him as an inconvenience rather than a moral dilemma. And every time someone brings up the Robin Hood legend — that the archer stole from the rich to give to the poor, and defended the weak against the powerful — Jackman gets a look on his face like someone farted. He’s disgusted by a world in which people just can’t accept violence for what it is, and he’d probably be fine with the Major Oak tree affiliated with his legend now being dead.

The Death of Robin Hood purposefully starts off with a surplus of gushing blood, crushed bones, and sliced-apart body parts to immerse us in a time and place where hope of any kind feels foolish. (The film’s title card shows up amid a scene where Robin Hood lurks in a field full of rock stacks marking the buried bodies of challengers he’s killed.) After Robin Hood ends up at an island priory overseen by the healer Sister Brigid (Comer), the pace slows down, a welcome change. Everything about this verdant, bucolic space is antithetical to the fog, fire, and wide-open, sprawling moors that have so far dominated the movie. Sister Brigid believes the island has a sentient power that attracts, and heals, people in need, as she tells Robin, going by the alias “Randolph,” in one of many scenes where characters swap stories to demonstrate how and why narratives change over time. And her theory is embodied by Bartlett’s leper character, who in his literal and physical anonymity feels simultaneously like a manifestation of the island itself and a guardian of its promise.

Bartlett’s character is like a rock slab, a vestige of an ancient religion, brought to life in overlapping strips of muslin, linen, and leather in shades of dove, cream, gray, and pale blue, with his hood pulled tight around his face and his hands wrapped in mittens. It’s the leper who rows injured people across the water to the St. Clement priority, questions Randolph about his intentions, and shows him the orchard of fruit trees growing in the island’s cemetery. Life and death exist together here, as they do in the leper himself; the disease’s nerve damage has deadened parts of his body, but his defense of the island invigorates him. Bartlett’s posture is ramrod straight, his voice a pleasant, precise British lilt that’s nothing like his natural Australian accent. With his eyes only, he conveys a combination of compassion and fierceness as he either assesses Randolph or shows off the trees he’s spent years cultivating. “The prioress does not care who we were,” he explains to Randolph. 

On a writing level, the leper is a fascinating figure, a man who clearly cares deeply about St. Clement but who also because of his own past believes in second chances and in giving people rejected by society the opportunity to create their own. But what makes Bartlett’s performance so special is how unexpectedly anonymous it is for an actor who has in recent years mostly been playing characters whose handsomeness, slyness, and shit-eating grins are integral to their presence. After breaking through on The White Lotus, Bartlett’s stints on Physical, Welcome to Chippendales, and The Last of Us had an undercurrent of damn, what a hottie uniformity that maybe overwhelmed the nuance he brought to those performances. (His character on Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is more of a nefarious cipher, but he’s still got that face.) Bartlett totally hides himself in The Death of Robin Hood and, in doing so, reveals depths of gentleness and intuitiveness that make the leper the film’s standout character — not unlike how Edward Norton’s performance as King Baldwin, the Leper King, in Kingdom of Heaven changed people’s perceptions of him as an actor. I apologize to Bartlett for not fully knowing his game until now. He’s the reason to see The Death of Robin Hood.