No tale to tell... just some gimmicks

Rating: 3/10 (2 March 2016)

I walked in the theater to watch The Revenant with a lot of anticipation, expecting a thrilling, hi octane show. I walked out exhausted, utterly disappointed and a lot more cynical about the Academy Awards. To begin with, the bear scene was probably one of the most horrifying scenes I have watched on the big screen in a long time. Yes, it does leave an impact and you are shaken. But probably, that was the only thing worth watching in the film. Of course the landscapes were breathtaking, the long shots awe- inspiring, the contradictory depiction of nature at its most beautiful and yet harshest was impeccable. But this was not a National Geographic documentary we had gone to see. We went to see a great tale being told masterfully. Unfortunately, there was no tale to be told. The linear, predictable, revenge story was probably the lamest I have seen in movies in a long time. The seventies' angry young man revenge stories in Bollywood had more meat, metaphorically speaking. Of course, The Revenant had more physical meat of all kinds on display. Horse meat, bison meat, pig meat, fish meat, human meat – you name it, and it was there. And all this graphic display of gore and flesh and violence, all seemed to be just a big fat gimmick than anything else. When you do not have a story to tell, you need to resort to gimmicks to keep the audience occupied. The dialogues were unnecessary. If you watched this in mute, I do not think it would have made much of a difference to your experience. This film has a motley group of characters, all flat through and through. There is no evolution of characters, there is not back stories for us to relate to, there is no point of emotional connect where we start empathizing with them. The apologetically shown snippets of Glass's back story left us wanting more. We would have loved to feel a bit more of his tragedy than just some floating (literally!) fragments of his imagination and dreams. Fitzgerald had better range – when facing imminent death, he tries to have a conversation on moralities with Glass after all his immoral acts – but still not worthy of an Oscar nomination. The rest were all perfunctory. This was technically a period film, but being set in the wild, hardly had any scope of interesting detailing as period films would usually have. The whole premise also feels very fantastical. The catastrophes that befell Glass every other scene seem too contrived. And that he actually survives all that in such inhospitable conditions seems highly improbable. Yes, if it was a movie about miracles, and not the sheer mental strength and vengefulness of the principal protagonist, it would have made more sense. I fail to see, besides a snapshot of a grand vision, what was so great directorially, for Iñárritu to fetch an Oscar for direction. Coming to Leonardo's much awaited acting Oscar, yes, I love him and believe he deserved one for sure. But not for this movie. He has given more nuanced performances earlier in movies such as The Aviator, The Wolf of Wall Street, Shutter Island, The Departed, to name a few. In The Revenant, he really did not have much scope to demonstrate his superlative acting skills given the circumstances his Glass was in. With a lot of well-crafted prosthetics, a face full of hair, a strange language to speak in, all he had to do was crawl and grunt and whisper. Where really did he get an opportunity to "act"? Go watch it, if you really do not have anything better to do.