The Revenant
Grade: A-
**Currently in Theaters**
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson,
Will Poulter and Forrest Goodluck
Premise: Badly-injured frontiersman Hugh Glass sets out on a
bloody path of revenge against those who betrayed him and left him for dead.
Rated R for strong bloody violence and gore, language,
disturbing images, some emotional content, and a brief scene of rape
Without question, the worst thing to happen to The Revenant is all the Oscar fuss
surrounding Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio is a fine actor, but the fact that he
just happens to have never won an
Oscar during his decorated, critically-acclaimed career, and might win for his intensely-physical
performance in this new gritty survivalist drama, has become an albatross
around the movie’s neck. I suppose it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it sells tickets and gets
butts in seats, but it’s a curse because much of the hype and excitement
surrounding the film is based on that maybe-Oscar selling point, and yet
DiCaprio’s performance doesn’t leap off the screen, which is bound to leave
people disappointed. This disappointment, as I felt myself and heard in others
last night, threatens to devour a movie that is an old-fashioned epic—based on
a 2002 novel about a an actual historical incident—that is about as well-made
as movies come.
Plot
A man who has lived among the Native Americans, speaks their
language, knows their customs, and who fathered a son (Forrest Goodluck) by a
Pawnee woman, Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), is extremely valuable as a guide to a
fur-trapping expedition led by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) in the
wilds of 1820s South Dakota .
He knows the land, he knows rival clans’ fighting tactics, and he knows some of
the milestones along their path. He’s also a crack shot with a rifle. But when
he’s savagely mauled by a grizzly bear, he’s left with broken bones, torn
flesh, and pain so agonizing he can barely move. The fur-trapping party’s
numbers were recently decimated in a horrific ambush by Arikara Indians, and
the surviving members are exhausted, scared, and hungry, and asking them to
tote Glass on a roughly-fashioned stretcher across rivers and up mountainsides
is a tall order. So Henry promises bonus money to anyone who will stay behind
to keep the incapacitated Glass company as he suffers, to ease his passing if
necessary, and to give him a proper Christian burial when the time comes. It
surprises everyone when it isn’t only the young, idealistic Jim Bridger (Will
Poulter) who volunteers to stay with Glass, but also John Fitzgerald (Tom
Hardy), a hulking, ill-tempered Texan who has seemed to be locking horns with
de facto leader Glass from the start.
Things go as bad as anyone could have thought. The grumpy,
selfish Fitzgerald decides to spin a story about Glass passing peacefully and
considers smothering him, but instead digs a shallow grave and tosses him in
and throws dirt on him while he’s still alive. He also tricks Jim Bridger into
thinking their lives are in danger from nearby Indians, and that they have no
choice but to leave Glass. But Glass, despite his mangled condition, isn’t
dead. Maimed, starving, freezing, and broken, but not dead. Despite the harsh
elements, his own wounds, and parties of hostile Indians roaming nearby, a
furious Glass decides to set out after Fitzgerald and teach him a lesson, that
only the strongest and most worthy will survive.
What Works?
If The Revenant
were perhaps 20 minutes shorter and didn’t come with the unavoidable will
he/won’t he Oscar talk about four-time nominee DiCaprio, it might be considered
a masterpiece and one of the great movies ever made. You know why? Because if
the first thing out of my friends’ mouths last night was that The Revenant was “a little overhyped”
(probably in regard to the Best Actor buzz), the second thing was that “the
directing was amazing”, and the third was that “the camera movement was
incredible”. You know how amazing it is to hear praise like that from regular
moviegoers about a $135 million film starring two A-list actors? More than the
acting or the action, people were talking about the cinematography and the
directing! Do most moviegoers even know what “cinematography” is?
That the sheer quality of The Revenant is being praised shouldn’t surprise anyone. Its
director—Mexican-born Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu—won three Oscars a little
less than a year ago when his pet project, the sharp, hyper-realistic showbiz
dramedy Birdman, won the Oscars for
Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Even before that,
Inarritu was famous for directing grueling but fascinating dramas like Amores Perros, 21 Grams and Babel
These scenes are a testament to everyone involved, from
Inarritu and Lubezki to the actors to Bryce Dessner, Carston Nicolai and
Ryuichi Sakamoto, who have fashioned a brilliant musical score, to Stephen
Mirrione, who, even with expert cinematographer Lubezki around, does some very
effective editing. I expect The Revenant
to be loaded with Oscar nominations on Thursday as mentioned, because, on a
technical level, it bests most films. And this comes after the film proved a
notoriously difficult 9-month shoot, changing locations from Alberta, Canada to
Argentina in the dead of winter, filming in natural light, surviving the
elements and keeping cast and crew healthy even as people fell off horses, or,
as required in the movie, ate raw meat, crawled through the snow, were dragged
through the snow, climbed trees, or waded through freezing rivers.
So, will Leo finally get his Oscar? From what I’ve been
reading and hearing, he probably will. So I guess the more important question
for me as a reviewer is, does he deserve it? For my part, while I will say this
is about as far-removed and in-character a performance as an actor of
DiCaprio’s profile can give, I’m not ready to hand him the trophy just yet. In
fact, I still hold to my months-old assertion that Michael Fassbender’s
tremendous performance in Steve Jobs
deserves the Oscar, nevermind that film’s highly-publicized box-office failure.
That’s not to snub DiCaprio of praise. For a guy who starred in what was then
the highest-grossing and most popular movie of all time (Titanic) at the age of 23, he’s had one of the most impressive and
diverse careers, doing absolutely anything but coasting on that teen-idol
reputation. His commitment to a role has never been in doubt, and no two of his
performances have been exactly alike in terms of appearance, accent and
temperament (and this is considering he’s made five movies with Martin Scorcese
alone). It’s been said he really ate raw bison liver, slept on the ground, and
waded into frozen rivers to make The
Revenant. Whether this was a no-holds-barred determination to finally win
an Oscar or just his passionate commitment to a challenge in a profession that
handsomely rewards people who undertake far less arduous challenges, I don’t
know. What I do know is that DiCaprio is effective, whether it’s embodying
Glass’s amazing resolve or working wonders with his face (a scene where he
quietly cradled the body of a dead loved one nearly broke my heart, and this
was without DiCaprio himself crying or voicing his grief at all).
In a vacuum with no Oscar talk, I would say DiCaprio was
very good, but that it wasn’t the actor who caught my attention so much as the
story in which he played a crucial part. In that same vacuum, while praise
would certainly be offered the top-billed star for his hands-on work, it would
probably be noted that the performance that really dominates The Revenant and holds viewers’
attention is that of Tom Hardy. The hugely-popular Hardy—an actor's actor with
a pin-up's face and physique—is riding high after the success of Mad Max: Fury Road, and he tears into
the part of John Fitzgerald with gusto, whether it's rambling and swearing in
that sometimes barely-intelligible Buffalo Bill accent or staring, wild-eyed,
at his surroundings as his survivor's senses tingle on overdrive. Best-known for
his strong, silent types in Warrior, The Drop and Mad Max, Hardy's constant prattle mixed with his intimidating
physicality is reminiscent of his more loquacious roles in Inception (also with DiCaprio) and The Dark Knight Rises. Yet Fitzgerald is even more intimidating
than comic book villain Bane, whom Hardy played in the latter—he's selfish but
smart, manipulative and violent but resourceful, borderline-buffoonish until
he's in your face, daring you to contradict him as he looms over you. With
DiCaprio nearly incapacitated or struggling along wordlessly for large portions
of the film, Hardy's self-serving bluster and undeniable charisma provide The Revenant with most of its must-watch
energy. He, too, could end up an Oscar nominee, though it must be said his road
to the final five is much tougher than DiCaprio's given the sheer number of
contenders for Supporting Actor.
Finally, impressive supporting performances are given by
Will Poulter as the conflicted Jim Bridger, and Domhnall Gleeson, whose
performance here is superb and makes it difficult to believe this is the same
actor from this year’s Ex Machina and
Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
What Doesn’t Work?
The Revenant is
two-and-a-half hours long, and it feels like it. Unlike The Martian, in which Matt Damon was stranded alone but talked
aloud to himself or to a camera almost the whole movie, Revenant has long stretches without dialogue (Glass’s encounter
with the bear left him almost unable to speak), and long stretches with the
camera focused on the beauty of nature a
la Terrence Malick. While this length is probably necessary to convey the
length of Glass’s journey (the real Glass supposedly traveled around 200 miles
in pursuit of Fitzgerald) and the difficulty it took, it does leave the movie
suspended a few times. There are a few moments when Fitzgerald seems a little
too cartoonish a villain as well. And a few of the nuances of the ending didn’t
quite work for me, including a somewhat improbable way for a main character to
go out.
Content
The Revenant is
one of the harder-core awards contenders you’ll see, with images including
arrows through the neck and eye, scalped corpses, a back shredded by bear
claws, people losing fingers, and corpses’ exposed innards. There’s a brief,
non-graphic rape scene. There are several F-words. The movie isn’t
exploitative, but it’s not for the faint of heart, given these graphic details
and the sheer intensity of some of the aforementioned set pieces. It’s a pretty
dark, sobering film—not for the kids.
Bottom Line
Will Leo finally win an Oscar? That’s been the main talking
point surrounding The Revenant, which
is somewhat unfortunate considering it’s a great movie and not just an actor’s
showcase. An old-fashioned epic that one of my friends compared to a mix of Dances With Wolves and Cast Away, Revenant is partly based on a novel that was inspired by near-mythic
true events in American history—namely, a man who was mauled by a bear, left
for dead by some dispassionate comrades, and who crawled through a frozen chunk
of the Louisiana Purchase to teach them some manners. Complete with
cowboys-and-Indians-type battle scenes, terrifying bear attacks, gripping chase
sequences, and some bloody mano-a-mano, plus plenty of gorgeous scenery shots, The Revenant is a technical marvel put
together by some Oscar-winning masters of the craft. It’s definitely long (2.5
hours) and has its slow moments and its artsy flourishes that are not quite
necessary. But Tom Hardy gives a terrific performance as a dastardly villain
with an accent you’ll want to mimic right away, and Leonardo DiCaprio…well,
from what I’ve heard, he’s probably going to win the Oscar. I wasn’t blown away by his performance in a
give-him-the-Oscar-now kind of way, but I will say it’s another great
performance by one of the most talented, committed actors in Hollywood . This movie’s not for the faint of
heart, though.
The Revenant (2015)
Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Written for the Screen by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and
Mark L. Smith
Based in part on the novel by Michael Punke
Rated R
Length: 156 minutes
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