Blood and Snow. Bear and Flesh.

Rating: Null/10 (30 January 2016)

It's wonderful to follow the path of people who are never afraid to try, no matter how comfortable and applauded they already are in whatever they are doing.
So here we have Iñarritu who has been working on story layering from the beginning of his career, first with the wonderful Arriaga as a partner. Together they have created 3 films with some of the best writing ever in the history of cinema, layered writing, stuff that is now kicking in and becoming the standard of film (and TV!) stories; the kind of bricks we use to remember our own lives.
After their collaboration Iñarritu did Biutiful, which almost as strong in its territory as you can get, but almost intentionally stripped of any of the layers that had been so masterfully built in the trilogy. Somehow it looked as though Iñarritu (and Lubezki) was actually "just" the visual vessel to which Arriaga poured his dreams. But Birdman tells otherwise, and indeed builds a whole new version of layered stories, meta-narrative and ways to dream.
Now Iñarritu gets into Herzog's territory, using the Biutiful approach: to have the story as quiet and simple as possible, here nearly absent, and get you to enter the journey by means of visual enchantment. Something like cinematic hypnosis. You're simply enticed to follow it, move along, survive with the character, suffer with him. The trick is simple: we are always with Dicaprio, we are him, we suffer what he does, and we aim at the same things that he does. So here we get the concept of classical hero revived and recovered, supported by the , as usual, brilliant photography of Lubezki (what a master...).
This is a wonderful experience, which in my opinion balances the graphic violence as the conductor of the story as Wook Park does in his trilogy of revenge. But it falls a little short of what Herzog did in the 70', and i suppose the reasons are relatively easy to identify. Leonardo is no Klaus, not as crazy as him, and not as ready to travel to Madnessland with a one way ticket as Kinski was willing to do (and did). And the whole production is not about a bunch of guys living the madness they are trying to film. This is probably as risky a film as you can get from Hollywood, but it is still Hollywood. This is an almost extreme film about an extreme (real) story, which is unbelievable, except for the fact that it actually happened.
I'm guessing that if he keeps doing what he has done after Babel, next time Iñarritu will reward us with a multi-layered narrative complex gem like Birdman. But the time after that maybe he will loose his mind, Coppola-style, and maybe he will really go up the river where this time he only washed his feet. Maybe he will actually spill the blood over the snow, instead of just enacting it. Someday maybe he will complete an opera house in the middle of some jungle, although i don't think Iñarritu is the type of artist who needs to leave his writing table to change our lives.
Dicaprio will probably get an Oscar for this one. I think he is a clever actor who senses where talent is and goes with it, in the tradition of Brad Pitt. But i don't think this is superlative acting, merely competent moaning. He has had more demanding roles already.
4.