A ghost film about a revenant, a double miss

Rating: 1/10 (31 January 2018)

Let's say it, this film is one of the Oscar-flop of 2016. Beautiful object, by an excellent filmmaker, but for once has planted. The Academy (and others) did not see anything.
The immediate impression is very positive. The photography is spectacular, costumes, makeup perfect (it's like) and the physical commitment of all the actors is impressive. The rhythm is slow, the plans are long and fluid. The story ... that's where it gets stuck.
This film is gold wrapping that wraps a bronze medal (it could have been chocolate)
I think Father Iñárritu got lost in his technical performance and the intensity of the context of his shooting.
After the very successful Birdman, who already put in play a technical challenge (very long shots) but was touching and fascinating by his scenario, his characters and this subtle game between the theatrical form and cinematograph, here he adds a technical layer but forget about everything else.
Because for the form, it is difficult to do better. Mainly thanks to the shooting locations and the magic of the weather phenomena. Magic that made several team members left the shoot because of the difficult conditions.
Here too we are dealing with long, very smooth shots, but because there is a but, this process is not ideal in all situations. And not all the time. The specificity of cinema is the succession of different points of view. The transition from one plane to another is an alchemy that creates our emotional involvement. A little like the chemistry that makes it possible to obtain a 3rd ingredient from the two completely different 1sts, the assembly makes it possible to create a sensation which is born from this succession of different images. Here this process involves us in what is happening on the screen (being a witness continuously of everything that happens) but curiously I found that it prevented me at the same time from entering the heart Of the history. I floated around the characters and in these snow-covered forests but I was not there.
I think that's where the technical process became its own justification and no longer a way of telling the story. Each day of shooting, the whole team repeated (blocking) these very complicated plans and at the end of the day, they had about 1 h 30 to turn the shots or plans. That's probably what made the filming so hard and long. A system to be able to say that one kept his line, that one preserved an artistic integrity.
Unfortunately, when a method becomes its own raison d'être, it condemns the purpose of the company: tell a story, make us live emotions.
There are several moments when wow have it in his head, but the heart is not there. Because the story is very linear and does not carry major issues. For short, it comes down to: argument, left for dead, survival, revenge, end.
During each of these stages, few moral questions are raised. There are some, but they remain confined to the facts presented. We leave the wounded man to his fate: but he is still alive, yes, but the Indians are coming. That kind. For a good part of the movie, DiCaprio struggles like hell. This kind of experience forces the one who lives it to make profound changes, such as during a pilgrimage. Here (almost) nothing. The character advances, survives, fights but nothing lets feel that he really lives the situation. Probably because the process (yet): paste a wide-angle lens on the nose of the actors imposes a way of seeing things that does not necessarily stick with what we tell. The system becomes its own disadvantage and kills what has spawned it.
We are very far from Seul au Monde, with Tom Hanks, where we feel transformed over the course of his adventure. I was infinitely more excited when I saw The Gray with Liam Neeson. Same context, the Indians in less, the soul and more,
The physical commitment of the actor is admirable but that's not what makes you vibrate. There are indeed some effects of style (appearances of his wife and son - adoptive) but which are only dreams, visions. They show us what he lost.
Painful detail that must be taken into account before seeing this film: its masochism. The number of sufferings through which the protagonist goes is such that it made me think of Mel Gibson's Passion. 2 hours of whipping. Here it is a little that, more varied. Such a martyr is almost survivalist pornography.
All this for what? A story of revenge. History of fat and cruel colonists.
Iñárritu has offered us some sumptuous films like 21 Grams or Babel. But here, the shell is empty, because I do not see what can be removed. Even the best filmmakers can crash. Iñárritu often talks about the ego in his interviews. And in general, it is people who have trouble getting rid of it who talk about it the most. I think he got himself here.
This film has the form of a work of art but does not have the substance. Its shape is reminiscent of Terrence Malick's films except that it is sorely lacking in sensitivity. Malick (in The Tree of Life for example) shows a succession of moments of life, without necessarily linking them by a dramatic plot, but everything digs in us and throughout the film, we are brought into this state that makes the films so wonderful sometimes. Here we live viscerally events (which is already not bad) but nothing "hollow".
We could make a musical analogy: this film is a bit like the last albums of the Dream Theater group. Formerly the spearhead of progressive hard-rock inventive, sensitive and technically very high level. Today they play their own farce, flowing in an infinite complexity but without soul.
In view of the beauty of the film's photography, the intensity of the actors' play (should they overplay for that to be seen behind their hair and their disheveled beard? Or is it to compensate for the emptiness of the characters?) and its slow form, it is easy to believe in a great movie. Iñárritu probably believes it. To believe is not to be.
In any case, I did not find what makes me go sit in a dark room.
I bet in a little while, nobody will talk about this movie anymore. Only time reveals what's true and what's not.