Let's Go Out To The Movies: "The Revenant": An Art House Movie For The Rest Of Us

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Written by Alejandro González Iñárritu
and Mark Smith

(R - 20th Century Fox - 2 hrs, 36 mins) 

Alo Party Peoples.

I don't like Alejandro González Iñárritu. Of the three Mexican New Wave directors that broke out into the blockbuster scene, he's the only one that's never struck a chord with me. Guillermo del Toro's ongoing commitment to pure aestheticism is a consistently engaging talent that he's built up over his entire career. I can get behind Alfonso Cuarón depending on what he's doing, but Iñárritu has just never really done it for me. 

And make no mistake, Iñárritu is very much a mainstream talent at this point. He's the Nickelback of art films, creating the safe, sterile version of something that feels edgy and dangerous on the surface so the average audience can feel like they've seen something important and deep; creating stock Oscar Bait dressed up in fancy technical gimmicks to make it more engaging in the moment, but once you look past the spectacle there's no, there there. Birdman's one-shot gimmick is like a surgeon replacing a healthy man's heart with a rubber duck without killing them. Sure, it's impressive that they pulled it off, but there was no reason to do it and it leads to significant problems down the road.

The Revenant, however, appears to be Iñárritu (mostly) dropping the gimmicks and just making a straight-up blockbuster. Remember how Fury Road looked like it was just going to be non-stop crazy car stunts but ultimately reveals itself to be a sweeping epic about personal autonomy and social power dynamics and feminist theory... while still being packed to the gills with crazy car stunts? The Revenant is playing the same game, but in reverse. The based on a true story of an early 19th Century fur trapper crawling his way back to civilization after being left for dead by his company after a brutal bear attack is supposed to be a somber meditation on man vs. nature and the human will to survive set against breathtaking naturalist cinematography and a haunting orchestral score... but it's also about a guy knife-fighting, stick-fighting, gun-fighting, tomahawk swinging, and scalping his way through harsh wilderness driven by pure unfiltered revenge. What Iñárritu has done with The Revenant is smuggle a dirty, nasty intense action melodrama into theaters in January disguised as a "serious" art house Best Picture front runner that millions of people are going to see. 

Leonardo DiCaprio is Hugh Glass, member of a fur trapping expedition in the Louisiana Territory. In 1823, as they're packing pelts for sale down the river, they are attacked by Native Americans and flee into the wilderness, where Glass' half-Indian son quickly becomes a point of contention, especially with Tom Hardy's Fitzgerald. While out scouting for game, he's brutally attacked by a bear and barely survives, Domhnall Gleeson's Captain Andrew Henry orders Fitzgerald to stay with him in his final days, and give him a burial while he leads the rest of the group to try and reach the nearest American fort hundreds of miles away. Quickly tiring of watching a man he hates die, Fitzgerald kills Hugh's son right in front of him, then buries him alive, steals his rifle, and leaves him to die. But out of sheer will, he drags himself out of his shallow grave, covers his gaping wounds with the bearskin that was his shroud, and crawls his way through the forest to find and kill the men that killed his son. (a "revenant" is a creature of European folklore said to be the spirit of the dead returning to terrorize the living, hence the title)

Regardless of how much prestige is attached to this and how much money was spent on it, The Revenant is a B-movie. A gorgeous, carefully crafted B-movie. The gimmick here is that the entire film was shot using only natural lighting. Some days they could only shoot for about 90 minutes, it's an insanely difficult way to make a film. And unlike Birdman's faux One-Take Wonder posturing, here the pretty pictures have a point. The emphasis on natural lighting gives the entire production an otherworldly appearance, like one great big moving landscape painting of human figures rendered small and insignificant next to the awesome power of nature. Which means that when it gets bloody, the violence sticks out even more compared to the pristine environment it takes place in.

A lot of it comes from DiCaprio's performance, he's consistently engaging and believable in the role, he doesn't even speak for most of the film, doing so would distract from the raw emotional artistry of what's happening onscreen. This could be the role that finally gets him an Oscar. If I had any real problem with DiCaprio's turn in this, it's that it will likely overshadow Tom Hardy's impressive in it's own way performance as Fitzgerald.

I don't want to oversell it, for how much The Revenant works in the moment, it's still an Iñárritu film, meaning that it's incredibly self-absorbed, runs a bit too long, and it's nowhere near as insightful or intelligent as it thinks it is. But it's an incredible ride while it lasts, and in the January doldrums, that's a welcome infusion of energy. It's an art house movie for people that don't go to see art house movies, and it's worth seeing at least once.

Have a nice day,

Greg.B

FINAL RATING: 3/5