Could be better, could be worse

Rating: 7/10 (13 January 2016)

Looks like the Internet already found a winner for the upcoming Academy Awards when it comes to the category "Best Actor". Stories of how Leonardo actually slept in a carcass and ate bison liver in order to prepare for the role made its round. I think it is certainly most honorable to prepare that obsessively for a role, but that's not what constitutes a great actor - not alone at least, otherwise we could have given Bear Grylls some Emmys already, what actually does not seem like a bad idea either, but back to the Revenant. In the end DiCaprio's portrait of what Glass might have been like is quite intense and gritty, but to me it also seems over the top at times. I didn't really believe any of his relations with the Indians, the Character somewhat falls flat. And that's the next problem this movie is facing. It seems like Iñárritu wanted to mix his story of a man overcoming the odds in the face of death all too bad with a political statement of how bad the white people were and how good and noble the Indians were. To me the characters are all portrayed too black and white, with only little shades of grey in between. Every Indian is good, white men mostly bad. From what history taught us about these days, this holds up to the truth to a certain degree, but still it does not really fit into the story. The movie would have worked perfectly well without Glass having an Indian wife and a son. All this dream sequences and flashbacks about him moaning his dead relatives, were nearby ridiculous at times. Yet one has to remark, that the Indians had some badass moments, that helped to carry the film. As well as the cinematography did. Oh boy, it certainly looks like Lubezki is about to get his third Oscar in a row for this one. The way he captured the landscape and follows the battle scene, this really gets you into the movie. As the credits rolled I was glad, that I watched it in the cinema, mostly because of the stunning visuals, the story itself is a great vengeance story as well, driven by a great cast (cheers to Tom Hardy who seems to be in the prime of his life) but I somewhat feel like it could have been a masterpiece, if only Iñárritu wouldn't have gone too far making it really kitschig and too much of a cliché at times. Still, good movie, recommend watching it in the cinema.