Good for Hollywood--Middle of the Road for Innaritu (cheated by my expectations)

Rating: 7/10 (30 September 2016)

First, my expectations: a film better than Babel but not near as good as Birdman. Result: I received what I was expectingalthough I was expecting a little better. DiCaprio as Hugh Glass is amazing and deserves every accolade there is. And they use a slew of real natives who are amazing (some actors, some non-actors), very 21st century indeed. The film is truly like nothing you have ever witnessed. No hyperbole. It's the first time anyone as used this particular camera: the 6.5k ARRI 65 (alongside a bevy of other high powered cameras and equipment). Then there is the fact that you have the incomparable Emmanuel Lubezki helming the cinematography, soaking up all the natural light and like an illusionist making it better than actual light. There aren't many more things that come to mind that are more beautiful than what Lubezki photographs in the remote Canadian wilderness and parts of Argentina (not where the film is set but where it was actually filmed). The natural vistas and their colors are awe-inspiring and seem to extend to eternity; a perfect symbol for what it is Glass must overcome. The trees seem to reach heaven, especially in the exquisite takes where the camera is set low, creating the impression that everything is larger than it is. The choice to use the camera he did shows Inarritu's continuing consciousness in mise-en-scene that is not seen as often in Hollywood anymore. The long takes are brilliant and Inarritu and Lubezki's depth of staging is wonderful, hopefully something that will be brought back to mainstream American cinema. The camera brings the audience right into the pulse-raising, survivalists, revenge film, which heightens the experience, making the travails, particularly Glass's, more visceral. The audience feels as if they can reach out and pull Leo away from the clutches of the GrizzlyBear. 1820s in the Great Plains. A group of frontiersman and fur trappers are making their way back to their base when Glass a tracker who has been living with Natives Americans for several years is attacked by a bear in one of the greatest uses of CGI that you'll see (I'm very picky about CGI). After this attack Glass is essentially left for dead. The only people that stay with him are his native son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), a young first timer, Bridger (Will Poulter), and the surly Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) who is doing it all for greed, as he has been promised more money. Glass is truly left for dead after Fitzgerald murders Hawk while the incapacitated Glass can only watch, setting in motionwell, the movie. Now, for Glass it is survive and kill Fitzgerald at all cost. All the while the camera roams steadily following the action, as the actors intertwine, utilizing a brutal mix of deep focus staging and in your lap foreground, putting the viewer smack in the center of this cold, unforgiving world.
While Tom Hardy is amazing at what he does. As always, as in this case, dove head into his character, truly bringing the vile John Fitzgerald to life, but the problem is that the character is a bit much, in the same way that the entire film's story is much. He does add comic relief and makes for a most despicable foe for Leo, just a slightly bit oversaturated and not in that great Kurosawa-epic way. This is my central problem with the filmit is overblown. The problem is in the presentation. The landscape and the images are almost hyper-real. There is this promotion of "based on a true story," but it is based on a novel that is inspired by true events. This is being nitpicky, but from the opening scene where Glass is dreaming of being with the tribe his wife was from and then the second scene where the camp is attacked by a group of natives on horseback, there is this sense of realism, a sense that this is a true past reality. The Revenant is an American foundation story; American mythology, only I felt it was being presented as this gritty, sense of life in the 1820s (which many times it is). This is partly my fault. I just wished that the film was letting the audience know that this is a tale akin to John Ford and D.W. Griffith. I wish it was presented more as myth; the film would have been better served for it. The long take of the CGI bear mauling DiCaprio over and over again at least puts into question all of this hype and promotion of "realism." I love all kinds of film: realistic, surrealistic, mystical, mythical, magical and poetic realism, expressionist, impressionist, avant-gardejust don't give me a homemade movie of you putting mittens on your kittens yet package it in Criterion case of Andrei Rublev. It would be one thing if I thought Inarritu was going to be my James Fenimore Cooper and DiCaprio/Glass his La Longue Carabine and the film carried that mythical and Romantic ambiance to it, but Inarritu misfires. I mean, I'm not saying a man can't survive riding a horse (after nearly being eaten alive by a go**amn bear) off a cliff, hit a tree, land on the ground, come to, go over and gut the now dead horse, remove his entrails and strip naked, burrowing yourself in the horse's carcass to stay warm and aliveI'mjustsaying. But "revenant" is in the title, which would probably most accurately be a "ghostly return"so I'm well aware that my expectation meter was dialed in the wrong direction, though the dial was turned there from mainly outside sources. In the beginning the dialogue is strong but by the end of the film becomes predictable clichés, sadly poeticism gets whittled down to nothing more than the ending of an over-the-top Blockbuster action flick. Myth or not, it's still better than 99% of mainstream or Hollywood films.