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The Revenant - Everything and Everybody out there in the wilderness WANTS to kill YOU.
The Revenant is the latest film from Alejandro Inarritu, following up on his Oscar winning Birdman and other similarly intense movies like 21 Grams and Babel. It’s also a word meaning “one who returns after death or a long absence”. The story is based on a novelization of a real story, that of Hugh Glass. Glass’s story was widely known in the 19th century and has been the subject of books, TV and movies before, notably Man in the Wilderness, Apache Blood, an episode of Death Valley Days and several books, the most recent of which was The Revenant, written by Michael Punke in 2002.
This most recent adaptation is a partially fictionalized version of the actual story of Glass. In the movie, Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an explorer and guide for a fur “trapping” expedition in the general vicinity of North Dakota and Montana in 1823. Glass had a Native American wife (killed in a raid) and their son Hawk accompanies the gnarly group of hunters on an expedition they are not prepared for. Previous hunters in this area have over-harvested the animal population and alienated the local population so badly that one tribe stages a deadly raid on the party, killing a large number of its members. The remainder of the party wants to retreat, splits up, takes the hides they have and want to get out as the brutal winter sets in. That’s when things get really bad. Their guide Glass encounters a mother bear and her cubs. The bear attacks Glass, badly mauling him before Glass manages to kill the bear with his one-shot rifle and Bowie knife. A small group of the hunters stays with Glass, who is essential to the party but the angry redneck villain among them, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), wants to let Glass die, kills his son and urges the party to return to “civilization” (an army outpost). The rest of the story is one of an almost unbelievable (if it were not true) survival and the desire for revenge.
I’ll begin my comments by saying that his is a brutal, tense and difficult story, not for the queasy of stomach. Vivid human and animal violence is never more than minutes away. Happy endings are rare in this time and place. The destruction of Native American tribes, as well as the spoiling of the wilderness, are constantly foreshadowed and well underway. Just how much of this mythologized story (aside from Glass's survival) is literally true is beside the point. The context is a big part of the story.
Direction in this movie is similar to last year’s amazing Birdman. It’s relentless, up close, and unflinching, except that this time, it’s an epic struggle rather than the ravings of a Broadway producer. I can’t imagine that Inarritu will get the Best Direction Oscar two years in a row, but this movie is just as taut as Birdman. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity) is amazing, ranging from scenic long shots of mountains, snow and wilderness to extreme close-ups of blood, violence and evisceration. The color of almost everything in this frigid winter horror is white or dull brown, but the splotches of color here and there become the visual accents that really drive in the story.
The acting is dominated by Leonardo DiCaprio’s mostly wordless body language. Much of his “dialog” consists of grunts and screams as he tries to survive alone in this landscape. There’s a lot of the “Oscar Buzz” that usually surrounds a highly promoted movie like this, and it’s well deserved. Most of the movie appears to have been filmed on location, in a real wintery wilderness, soaking wet, buried alive and nearly frozen. It’s not a role for the physically timid. Tom Hardy, as the scary Fitzgerald, is clearly a supporting role, but it’s the sort of role that Hardy does best, a guy who’s nearly as grizzly as the bears he fears, is always walking around with an attitude that scares everybody else, and a man of few words that you probably wish he would keep to himself.
This movie is well worth seeing as long as you’re not in the mood for something light. Like the other current survival move, The Heart Of the Sea, there’s barely a smile or light moment in the entire 2 1/2 hours, only brief moments when nobody is near death or killing someone else. There’s nothing about this that romanticizes the frontier in 1823. It’s all there, the danger, conquest and exploitation that we don’t like to think about. It’s not a story with epic sweep, but a small, personal story that’s a metaphor for the bigger events. The movie was first shown before the new year, so I can’t imagine that it will not show up prominently in the upcoming Oscars. It's far better than Heart of the Sea, so, if you want to see one survival movie this winter, this one is it.
The Revenant is the latest film from Alejandro Inarritu, following up on his Oscar winning Birdman and other similarly intense movies like 21 Grams and Babel. It’s also a word meaning “one who returns after death or a long absence”. The story is based on a novelization of a real story, that of Hugh Glass. Glass’s story was widely known in the 19th century and has been the subject of books, TV and movies before, notably Man in the Wilderness, Apache Blood, an episode of Death Valley Days and several books, the most recent of which was The Revenant, written by Michael Punke in 2002.
This most recent adaptation is a partially fictionalized version of the actual story of Glass. In the movie, Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an explorer and guide for a fur “trapping” expedition in the general vicinity of North Dakota and Montana in 1823. Glass had a Native American wife (killed in a raid) and their son Hawk accompanies the gnarly group of hunters on an expedition they are not prepared for. Previous hunters in this area have over-harvested the animal population and alienated the local population so badly that one tribe stages a deadly raid on the party, killing a large number of its members. The remainder of the party wants to retreat, splits up, takes the hides they have and want to get out as the brutal winter sets in. That’s when things get really bad. Their guide Glass encounters a mother bear and her cubs. The bear attacks Glass, badly mauling him before Glass manages to kill the bear with his one-shot rifle and Bowie knife. A small group of the hunters stays with Glass, who is essential to the party but the angry redneck villain among them, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), wants to let Glass die, kills his son and urges the party to return to “civilization” (an army outpost). The rest of the story is one of an almost unbelievable (if it were not true) survival and the desire for revenge.
I’ll begin my comments by saying that his is a brutal, tense and difficult story, not for the queasy of stomach. Vivid human and animal violence is never more than minutes away. Happy endings are rare in this time and place. The destruction of Native American tribes, as well as the spoiling of the wilderness, are constantly foreshadowed and well underway. Just how much of this mythologized story (aside from Glass's survival) is literally true is beside the point. The context is a big part of the story.
Direction in this movie is similar to last year’s amazing Birdman. It’s relentless, up close, and unflinching, except that this time, it’s an epic struggle rather than the ravings of a Broadway producer. I can’t imagine that Inarritu will get the Best Direction Oscar two years in a row, but this movie is just as taut as Birdman. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity) is amazing, ranging from scenic long shots of mountains, snow and wilderness to extreme close-ups of blood, violence and evisceration. The color of almost everything in this frigid winter horror is white or dull brown, but the splotches of color here and there become the visual accents that really drive in the story.
The acting is dominated by Leonardo DiCaprio’s mostly wordless body language. Much of his “dialog” consists of grunts and screams as he tries to survive alone in this landscape. There’s a lot of the “Oscar Buzz” that usually surrounds a highly promoted movie like this, and it’s well deserved. Most of the movie appears to have been filmed on location, in a real wintery wilderness, soaking wet, buried alive and nearly frozen. It’s not a role for the physically timid. Tom Hardy, as the scary Fitzgerald, is clearly a supporting role, but it’s the sort of role that Hardy does best, a guy who’s nearly as grizzly as the bears he fears, is always walking around with an attitude that scares everybody else, and a man of few words that you probably wish he would keep to himself.
This movie is well worth seeing as long as you’re not in the mood for something light. Like the other current survival move, The Heart Of the Sea, there’s barely a smile or light moment in the entire 2 1/2 hours, only brief moments when nobody is near death or killing someone else. There’s nothing about this that romanticizes the frontier in 1823. It’s all there, the danger, conquest and exploitation that we don’t like to think about. It’s not a story with epic sweep, but a small, personal story that’s a metaphor for the bigger events. The movie was first shown before the new year, so I can’t imagine that it will not show up prominently in the upcoming Oscars. It's far better than Heart of the Sea, so, if you want to see one survival movie this winter, this one is it.