The Revenant
復仇勇者
神鬼獵人
Directed by:
Alejandro González IñárrituCinematography:
Emmanuel LubezkiCast:
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Duane Howard, Arthur Redcloud, Melaw Nakehk'o, Grace Dove, Lukas Haas (more)VOD (5)
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Inspired by true events, The Revenant is an epic story of survival and transformation on the American frontier. While on an expedition into the uncharted wilderness, legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally mauled by a bear, then abandoned by members of his own hunting team. Alone and near death, Glass refuses to succumb. Driven by sheer will and his love for his Native American wife and son, he undertakes a 200-mile odyssey through the vast and untamed West on the trail of the man who betrayed him: John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). What begins as a relentless quest for revenge becomes a heroic saga against all odds towards home and redemption. (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (17)
I was waiting for something in the style of the Black Robe in combination with McCarthy's Bloody Meridian and in a way I got it. Sadly, there was a lot of kind of mystically symbolic insertions that were frequent, pointless and above all unintentionally stupid. It would have been even better if it had kept only in the department of inhospitable wilderness, pragmatic rough trappers, Indians on the warpath, survival, endless snowy distances, howling winds, slow pace. Although it undoubtedly has a few weak or unnecessary scenes, but when it's good (which is true for most of the footage), it's damn good. Largely thanks to the raw atmosphere, poor performance of lame Leo, amazing (however traditional) grumbling Hardy and even Gleeson is surprisingly a great fit. And we need to mention the camera since there has not been anything better since There Will Be Blood. Overall, I really enjoyed it, although I had considerable reservations.
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Revenant is undoubtedly a great movie. It has genius camera, brutally frozen locations, two absolutely perfect scenes and Leonardo DiCaprio, whose performance is an acting orgasm like never before. If not before, then for this performance he simply has to get the Oscar award. Personally, I think that his showing off is beyond the line. The less talking there is, the more action is happening on the screen. Leo is gutting a horse to hide in his internals or eating raw meat to survive. Plus, he survives a lot ofunbelievable stuff that no average citizen of the Czech Republic would be able to survive. All of that for the most classic reason of all – for revenge. It’s a shame that the creators stretched the story so much. They could’ve spared us some of the flashbacks. Two and a half hours is a lot of time for a story like that. Anyway, I admit that the first scene of the attack of the Native Americans and then the scene of the bear attacking Leo will stick in my memory as the best I’ve seen in a pretty long time.
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So intensely destructive that at the very end, I felt like Glass himself. Broken, torn apart, utterly ruined, down to the marrow and bone. But unlike him, I would give up practically instantly and just wait for death. He crawls, struggles, and in various croaky ways tries to reach his archetypal goal through Leonardo DiCaprio's thrilling interpretation, to the point where even the winter wind on the way back from the cinema felt like the most pleasant spring breeze. I love the classic concept of the western genre, but this turning of traditions upside down needs to happen once in a while in every genre. Especially when the key scenes (the she-bear, the river, the bisons) are already iconic images from the moment of their debut. A magnificent epic and the most intimate rebirth in one.
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Well, I was 100% sure that I would be delighted and I was already formulating enthusiastic compliments in my head. And then nothing. Revenant is a great ninety-minute survival movie that unfortunately last 150 minutes. The rest is filled with ambition supported with shallow Indian mysticism. The attempts at transcendental ideas unfortunately lead to nowhere, they are just Iñarritu confidently scratching the surface. It’s not only that they don’t work, but they also end up utterly harming the core story and its characters. I didn’t see Hug Glass on the screen even for a moment. It’s always Leonardo DiCaprio performing art under Iñarritu’s direction. Disappointed as hell and the current 83% in view of the 66% for Birdman is a bad joke.
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In the same way that we talk about the “Hitchcockian” attributes of some thrillers and use the term “Lynchian” to describe weird films, we may soon find ourselves relating the name of Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu to movies around which media buzz is artificially created. As was the case with Birdman from the year before last, the hype that accompanies The Revenant is far greater than the attention that the film deserves based on its cinematic qualities. With their respective skills, the dream team of Iñárritu, Lubezki and DiCaprio could have made one of the most powerful adventure movies of recent years. Unfortunately, their straightforward B-movie plot couldn’t be “boosted” by the fluid camerawork, which performs even more captivating tricks than we could see in I Am Cuba (for me, the benchmark when rating films with sophisticated long shots). The story of a man chewed on by a bear, who returns “home” in the manner of Odysseus, is interspersed with mystical dream (hallucination) sequences, dialogue about God reincarnated as a squirrel and manifestations of the devastating nature of unregulated capitalism. Iñárritu, who always takes delight in the suffering of his characters, would be the ideal director for a raw western in the traditional mould, in which violence serves as the main means of communication, sets the action in motion, sets up the plot twists and solves problems. Unfortunately, as pointed out above, he decided to communicate meanings in ways other than through spectacular violence. With words, for example. The use of violence as a central narrative element is justified by its insertion into the unsteady framework of a family melodrama, enchanted by Indian mysticism. I am convinced that The Revenant would have been a tonally and rhythmically more balanced film if it had not so stubbornly pretended to have philosophical depth and tremendous spiritual reach. Unlike in the case of Tarkovsky or Malick, the spiritualism in this film is limited to empty words and unoriginal symbolism. The formalistic aspect is in no way uplifting. Besides the motif of the spiral engraved on the canteen, for example, the cyclical concept of time, which is inherent to the indigenous American population, only highlights the repetitiveness of the protagonist’s suffering. Otherwise, the film has a thoroughly standard structure, with precisely timed twists, conscientious utilisation of all motifs and a satisfying ending that leaves no essential question unanswered. It’s okay for one-dimensional characters to serve as tools for conveying information and pushing the narrative in the required direction, but I don’t think it’s okay if they serve no other purpose, despite the film’s attempt to use them to convince us of its own inventiveness and its commitment to a cause (in this case, the interests of Native Americans; see the documentary about the making of A World Unseen, which is basically very naïve anti-capitalist and environmentalist agitprop). For me, the most fitting metaphor for the film, which outwardly criticises pragmatism but is at the same time supremely pragmatic in the handling of its characters and themes, remains the gif of the lead actor as Hugh Glass buried alive, torn and broken, clawing for his dreamed-of Oscar with his last ounce of strength. 65%
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