We are living in complicated times, says Robert Redford, who has no fear of exposing the truth. His latest film is his most political yet, he tells Michael Dwyer.
Now 71 and a grandfather since 1991, Robert Redford has aged gracefully. The lines crossing his features are more accentuated, but he looks remarkably fit in his denim shirt and jeans as he settles into a day of interviews in London. His new movie, Lions for Lambs, is his seventh as a director - he won the Oscar for his first, Ordinary People (1980) - and his most overtly political. The tagline in its advertising campaign is: "If you don't stand for something, you might fall for anything."
Taking place in real time in three locations, it introduces six characters faced with taking a stand. Redford plays an idealistic California college professor confronting one of his brightest students (Andrew Garfield) about his apathy. Two of his other students (Derek Luke and Michael Peña) are young working-class men who enlist and are sent to fight in Afghanistan. And in Washington, a confident, fast-rising Republican senator (Tom Cruise) is feeding his war strategies as a story to a cynical veteran journalist (Meryl Streep).
Redford has been producing politically themed movies since the 1970s, but "that was a different time, and maybe it's gone," he says. "There's no Hollywood anymore, so let's just call it the mainstream. There's more investment capital available now and there are a lot more films out there, as you can see from this fall. The mainstream usually follows trends and seldom sets them."
He believes it is much easier in the present political climate to make movies critical of the US administration.
"They have tanked in terms of popularity, whereas four or five years ago, you would be accused of being unpatriotic if you were negative about what the administration is doing. Now, with the exposure of the truth, it's easier, and there will be a lot of films about Iraq and about Afghanistan. I wasn't interested in making a film about the Iraq war because I knew that would be well covered by other films and documentaries, although the film contains the war as an element."
One scene features the professor in a restaurant with the two students who go to war, and there is a striking contrast between the comfort of that environment and the fate that awaits them on the snowy mountains of Afghanistan. It makes one wonder why they would even dream of enlisting.
"These two young men have already been through far greater risks than other people, such as the student I'm trying to connect with in the film," Redford says. "Those guys grew up in neighbourhoods that are extremely risky, with drug wars and drive-by shootings, and they were lucky to survive that. They are in college on a part-time athletics scholarship, but they want to get an education and to get ahead.
"My character sees their potential, and his job is to inspire his students to aspire to greater things. What he didn't figure was they would make the choice to enlist, particularly as he had been in another war - Vietnam - that was a wrong one. Having told them not to sit on the sidelines, he is disappointed that they decide on the course of action that is to fight for their country." We are living in a very complicated time with horrible results, he says.
"That's what I wanted to explore in the film - to look at the issues of where education is today, and the political administration and the media and the role of the citizen today. The film attempts to raise all these issues so that there is a debate going on and the audience can respond to it in their own way. The film provides questions rather than answers."
REDFORD SAYS THAT when he was growing up in Los Angeles, he couldn't have cared less about politics. "Richard Nixon was my state senator and he was so boring. I thought that if that's what politics is - boring people in suits saying boring things - then I don't want any part of it." His interests were in sport and in art and he decided to pursue his education by getting out into the world. He went to Paris when he was 18.
"I didn't really think about politics until I came to Europe," he says. "I was asked to leave school because I was a very poor student, and anyhow, I wanted to experience other cultures and other histories. I had very little money and I stayed in a bohemian section of Paris with a lot of students from different backgrounds. We all lived in a communal way.
"I began to feel challenged politically because I didn't have a clue. That was in the late 1950s. The Algerian war was on at the time and was a hot issue in France. I felt humiliated that I didn't even know much about my own country's politics.
"That made me want to learn about it, which I did from European perspectives. When I did, I realised their point of view was very different from what I had been raised with. I was raised in California during the second World War and into the 1950s, and everything was fine. The sun always shone. Everybody looked healthy, wore ties and smoked in restaurants, and there were cars for everybody."
By the time Redford returned to the US after a year and a half away, he says he felt much more focused on his own country, politically and culturally.
As he became a successful actor, he took control over his career and began to produce his own films, expressing a critical outlook on his country in such politically themed films as The Candidate, All the President's Men and Three Days of the Condor.
In preparing Lions for Lambs, he says he was determined to avoid stereotyping, particularly in the case of the smooth Republican senator played by Cruise. I mention that the character resembles Democratic presidential contender John Edwards rather than a stock Republican caricature.
"I think they have the same hair stylist," Redford jokes. "But I don't believe in agit-propaganda. It would have been very easy just to talk about the present administration and the state of the country, but to me, that would have just been shallow. We all have some responsibility, all of us, and we should look at it in a broader, deeper way.
"What could make the Cruise character dangerous is that he could be a better dressed-up version of what we have now. The idea was to present him as someone who was attractive and articulate and would be popular, tough-minded - and dangerous. To depict him as a moustache-twirling villain would have been pointless."
Redford's stated intention was that each of the six main characters in the film would have a clear point of view. At one stage the senator asks the journalist what happens if the US leaves Afghanistan and the Taliban metastasises into something far worse than it is now. "It is already far worse there since we started making the film in January," Redford says. "But the senator's main theme is winning. When he is asked why we invaded a country that did not attack us, he just dismisses it as the same old question people ask over and over, which is exactly what this administration says. I know that when this film is shown in the more conservative states, people will agree that the senator has a point and they will wonder why this lady is giving him a hard time in her interview."
GIVEN REDFORD'S RECORD as a supporter of the Democrats, conservative viewers surely will approach the film with caution, if they go at all. "Considering where we are in this country and with all those right-wing bloggers out there, they're already condemning the film without even seeing it. They assume it is a left-wing film and I expected that. I've been an activist, but certainly not on the level of Michael Moore, for example. I haven't been out there slashing away.
"I've been focused more on the environment. I've very strong feelings about that, so I tend to stay in that area. I've been an activist on that since 1969, which was not an easy time. Those were the days when the oil and gas companies controlled the show in terms of propaganda. Anyone speaking about solar energy was dismissed as a radical or a tree-hugger or a granola-cruncher. I was out there feeling very often alone."
THE CONVERSATION TURNS to Al Gore receiving the Nobel Prize for his campaign on global warming. While Redford clearly welcomes the spotlight shone on the issue, he evidently is not an admirer of Gore.
"Al Gore is making a lot of money and he's having a belle époque, a heroic moment. He suffered enormously in the last election, partly through his own fault because he didn't run a good campaign. He presented himself as wooden and stiff, and Bush went in like a regular guy you could have a drink with, if that's what you want for your president. Our country is very focused on cosmetics. But I never believed that Bush won, or that it was a fair election. Anyhow, Gore has come back through speaking on the environment, and he got a lot of money behind him. The Clinton administration had a lot of money contacts, as you can see now with Hillary. They're capitalising on those contacts. Gore was able to call on that money to build himself a new campaign and pick an issue. "And he picked an issue that just happened to arrive at its moment in time. Wall Street realised there was money to be made by going green, and the health issues finally came to roost."
Having played a political contender in The Candidate and one of the journalists whose exposure of the Watergate scandal brought down Richard Nixon in All the President's Men, Redford insists that he has no interest whatsoever in pursuing a political career. "No way," he says. "Right now the political system so restricts public office with compromise. First of all, I've no interest in compromise. And it's too constipated a system."
And who would Redford like to see in the White House in 2009? "Well, just somebody different from what we've got, obviously, but I haven't found it out there yet. So far there's not anybody terribly inspiring."
Lions For Lambs goes on general release next Friday.
Golden years: career highs on film
Robert Redford had his first credited cinema role in War Hunt (1962). The cast featured Sydney Pollack, who went on to direct the actor in seven films. Before Redford turned director in 1980, he starred in a succession of movies that were commercial or critical hits, and often both.
The Chase, 1966: Redford plays an escaped convict with Jane Fonda as his wife in Arthur Penn's powerful, vastly underrated Southern drama featuring Marlon Brando, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall and James Fox in a terrific ensemble cast.
Barefoot in the Park, 1967: Redford marries Fonda again in an entertaining Neil Simon comedy.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969 (above): Paul Newman and Redford play bank robbers on the run to Bolivia, leaping from a great height at the end of this popular western.
Downhill Racer, 1969: Redford plays a cocky member of the US skiing team who clashes with his coach (Gene Hackman).
Tell Them Willie Boy is Here, 1969: Redford is the sheriff leading a manhunt for a Native American (Robert Blake) in a tense, complex western from blacklisted director Abraham Polonsky.
The Candidate, 1972: Reuniting with Downhill Racer director Michael Ritchie, Redford plays a US senate contender in an acute political satire.
Jeremiah Johnson, 1972: Redford's early interest in the environment is evident from Sydney Pollack's picture of a mountain man, shot against handsomely photographed locations in Utah, where Redford made his home and founded the Sundance Institute and its highly successful spin-off film festival.
The Way We Were, 1973: Working with Pollack again, Redford co-stars with Barbra Streisand in a hit melodrama set against Communist witch-hunts in Hollywood.
The Sting, 1973: Redford and Paul Newman reunite as con artists in 1930s Chicago for a huge hit that won seven Oscars, including best picture.
The Great Gatsby, 1974: Redford is impressive in the title role of this uneven F Scott Fitzgerald adaptation co-starring Mia Farrow as Daisy Buchanan.
Three Days of the Condor, 1975: Redford stars as a CIA researcher uncovering a conspiracy in Pollack's popular thriller.
All the President's Men, 1976: Redford and Dustin Hoffman play Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story, in Alan J Pakula's riveting thriller that's steeped in paranoia. - Michael Dwyer