Opinion: Robert Redford will always light up our screens

Robert Redford died this week at the age of 89. But his performances are indelible.

We’ll still see him as the Sundance Kid alongside Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy, leaping off a cliff into rocky rapids. Roy Hobbs in “The Natural,” shattering the stadium lights with a home run. Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men,” teamed with Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein: reporters in scuffed shoes and dangling neckties, digging out the squalid details of a presidential scandal.

And then there are the fine films he directed, including “Ordinary People,” “Quiz Show,” and “A River Runs Through It.”

But Robert Redford’s artistic vision will be projected beyond his lifetime, in the works of filmmakers whose careers took off from the Sundance Institute and Film Festival — named after that infamous Kid — dedicated to supporting independent and risk-taking work.

“Blood Simple,” the first film from the Coen Brothers, Steven Soderbergh’s “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” all premiered at Sundance. So did Kevin Smith’s “Clerks,” Ava DuVernay’s “Middle of Nowhere,” Ryan Coogler’s “Fruitvale Station,” and Sian Heder’s “CODA,” which went on to win three Oscars, including Best Picture.

“He opened a door on ‘the possible’ for so many young talented artists,” John Cooper, who once headed the Sundance Film Festival, told us this week. “And they went on to show others the possibilities in themselves.”

Robert Redford was, well, Robert Redford: handsome, famous and charismatic. But he didn’t always embrace the golden smile life had bestowed on him, telling The New York Times in 1974, “This glamour image can be a real handicap. Image is crap.” 

As the critic Peter Debruge suggested in Variety this week, “Sundance was his way…to put it in eco-conscious terms — of recycling the good fortune he’d enjoyed into opportunities for others.”

And he wasn’t a distant benefactor. John Cooper described how much Redford enjoyed working over ideas with young filmmakers at the Sundance Institute each summer.

“Working on scenes, working on scripts,” he said. “I think that recharged his creative batteries.”

For decades, Robert Redford helped talented artists follow his Sundance leap into the rocky rapids of filmmaking. In a way, his work will still light up our screens.