#6 - The Revenant
Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2015
After a fur trapper is mauled by a bear and left for dead, he makes his way across a snow-covered landscape to take revenge on the man who wronged him.
How easy is it to become complacent with cinema as an art form? Can a person giving their all towards pushing the envelope of their respective medium still inspire platitudes that feel more like polite concessions than heartfelt compliments? Does even the most astounding display of creative craftsmanship start to feel too repetitive after enough time has passed? These questions and many others plagued me during my viewing of
The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu's immense take on the revisionist Western (though the man himself may argue with such a classification). Having already made a huge splash with the Broadway-based black comedy
Birdman, Iñárritu now opts to apply his craft to a considerably more ambitious project that sees him go from a cramped New York theatre to the unforgiving expanse of a frozen landscape. The sheer scope that was evident from the very first trailers certainly seems to be in full force, but one can just as easily wonder if Iñárritu's passion for technical flair and impressionistic storytelling can really be enough to make
The Revenant great in its own right.
The Revenant takes place in the wintry North American wilderness during the early part of the 19th century. After beginning with a cryptic handful of opening scenes, the film drops us into the middle of a heated battle between an outfit of white American fur trappers and a tribe of Arikara natives. In the midst of this battle, two white men stand out above the rest. One is Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), a rugged man of principle with a dark and troubled past who wants nothing more than to care for his young mixed-race son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). The other is John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), an embittered mercenary who lives for nobody but himself and is already antagonistic towards Glass even before circumstances lead to him embracing his villainous role. As if the bloody Arikara raid that leaves most of the group dead and the survivors running for their lives from a determined foe isn't bad enough, things get a whole lot worse when Glass goes to scout ahead and is almost mauled to death by a grizzly bear, forcing the remaining members of the hunting party to decide what to do about their gravely wounded companion.
At the outset,
The Revenant definitely makes sure to grab one's attention. A lot of that has to do with director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki, who has built quite the name for himself off the back of some incredibly ambitious cinematography. His work involves all manner of engaging techniques from the deft balance of light and colour to the free-wheeling long takes that push the limits of what a movie camera can do and provide some indelible imagery in the process. This is especially true from the first few minutes of
The Revenant, which follows up dreamlike nature photography with a blistering battle that involves the camera rushing and whirling to capture a variety of graphic deaths and injuries. The decision to film the proceedings using only natural lighting is an interesting one and does yield some aesthetically arresting scenes, though Iñárritu and Lubezki's dedication to this task seems a little ironic considering how there are moments that draw attention to the camera's existence such as lens flares and visible condensation. His famed use of long takes is definitely present but is often passed over in favour of sequences that can't help but look choppy in comparison to his best work thanks to the editing - and that's without mentioning the debatable quality of the CGI effects used to bring everything from wolves to bears into blurry, not-entirely-convincing existence that contrasts quite severely against Lubezki's handiwork.
Even after taking into account the Hollywood epic's tendency towards narratives that are composed with broad strokes,
The Revenant still feels awfully underweight. A lot of this has to do with a staggering running time of 156 minutes, which you'd think would suit the film's sheer scope but instead serves to undermine it. Revenge is the driving force at the heart of the film, yet it takes the better part of an hour before the event that truly sets Glass on a quest for revenge even takes place. At least the film knows better than to make the entire film about Glass, following a number of different parties as they journey across the frozen wastes for one reason or another - of special note is the leader (Duane Howard) of the outwardly antagonistic Arikara tribe who has his own sympathetic motives that make him a much more nuanced individual than a stereotypical savage would be. However, the multiple narrative threads don't always yield anything of substance; even the varied scenes of nature captured in all their glory by Lubezki start to lose their appeal as the film drags on and on, leading one to grow a little tired of seeing the same things over and over. The morning sky as seen through the trees, a tiny orange campfire burning against against a dull blue landscape, an all-but-incapacitated DiCaprio dragging himself very slowly across the ground...the list goes on. For a film that is dependent on its visuals to distinguish itself from similar works, it sure does threaten to run them into the ground through sheer repetition.
Considering how light on narrative substance
The Revenant tends to be, it's clear how much the film needs to be carried by its performers; this is a fact that threatens to make or break the film. DiCaprio has become something of a walking punchline in recent years because of his tendency to dedicate himself to challenging roles that involve collaborating with esteemed directors and making all sorts of outwardly prestigious films. Unfortunately, such dedication has the unintended side-effect of making him seem like he's trying too hard to prove something, which ironically renders him awfully unconvincing in the process. His work in
The Revenant seems to reflect the same tragically flawed passion that informs his other performances as he puts himself through the proverbial wringer for the sake of this grueling survival story. He does go through quite the endurance test as he floats along icy rivers, crawls through dirty snow, and even eats raw animal parts at one point. Genuine displays of physical distress only go so far when it comes to making a great performance, though; in this regard, I do appreciate that DiCaprio is making more of an effort to work outside his comfort zone and plays a character devoid of his usual smooth-talking charm. Try as he might, DiCaprio still can't make the most of a character like Glass, who still remains fairly flat even after his supposedly mysterious past has been revealed.
Other performers don't fare much better. If DiCaprio can be said to struggle with disappearing into a role, then Hardy's problem is that he disappears into a role too well. While I tend to like his work more often than not, this definitely feels like "not". A lot of that has to do with his turn as a gruff American villain; while Hardy has earned a reputation for doing thick affectations that make his lines hard to decipher, this quality seems far more pronounced when he tries to do guttural American voices. It definitely worked against him in John Hillcoat's bootlegger drama
Lawless, and though his work here is arguably better, there are still plenty of instances where he becomes a bit too hard to understand even after you've had time to get used to his diction. This undercuts important moments, such as a fireside monologue about God that he delivers to his guilt-ridden accomplice (Will Poulter). Younger actors like Poulter and Goodluck do what they can in fairly simple supporting roles, while Domnhall Gleeson's turn as the ambushed party's upstanding military commander is surprisingly solid considering the character's fairly basic nature. The same goes for Howard, who initially makes for an interesting character because of his character's relative unpredictability within this fairly familiar storyline and has enough chops to make it work.
Though it features considerable scale and epic ambitions,
The Revenant ultimately feels like too much of a compromise to be a truly great film. Despite the talent involved, many of the players on either side of the camera seem to be going through the motions in telling a story that is perhaps a bit too simple even by the standards of existing Hollwood epics. At least things are justified somewhat by the fact that the film offers something more than the stolid technical professionalism one expects from a Hollywood epic, infusing the film with just enough energy and innovation to make it seriously watchable (even if you might be used to it after seeing enough Lubezki-lensed films). The same goes for the performances, which are supposed to supplant an extremely rudimentary story with comparatively little depth; this is especially true considering how the film frequently involves potentially incomprehensible dialogue from its harsh-voiced leads (with Hardy naturally being the biggest offender in this regard). Even the minimalist score that alternates between sombre and tense does little to stick out in a good way, with the only thing I remember about it being its extremely redundant presence during the climatic scene (especially since the earlier bear scene played out with no music whatsoever and lost none of its effect in the process). Hardly the worst film of the year, but I'd have trouble thinking of it as the best.