The Revenant

The Revenant

The four-way battle of man vs. man vs. nature vs. himself has never been construed in the way The Revenant does in this Oscar-nominated epic survival film. Once again, Alejandro González Iñárritu blesses us with a masterclass visual poetry as he cements his spot into one of the world’s visionary directors in cinema. (Check out Kayo’s list of Iñarritu’s most essential films). The Revenant, inspired by true events, tells the gruesome tale of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), an experienced frontiersman on a fur-trading expedition to a journey to retribution after being abandoned by his comrades. Stuck amid miles of harsh and uncharted wilderness, Glass is fueled by only two things to survive: his insurmountable love for his family and his desire for revenge.

Snippets of peaceful life and the sound of soothing calm water open the film, and we are subjected to this dream-like meditative state of life, a false security from the maelstrom that ensues in the next frame – when a gang of Hawkeyes and Katniss Everdeens Arikara Native Americans lay slaughter on Glass’ fur-trapping team. In this thrilling one-take action sequence, the film’s first arrow whooshes through a mouth and then a series of sheer carnage follows. Shotguns are fired, axes are swung, faces are bashed. For the love of pelts, the Peter Pan books taught as wrong—this is what war among aboriginals looks like. The film begins with a testosterone-driven start but in its entirety  the film succeeds in bringing out heavy themes of loss and redemption.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Revenant (2015)

DiCaprio, in his cripplingly painful role, is immortalized in this film—this is no spoiler considering you have already googled the definition of ‘revenant’. “As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight. You breathe. Keep breathing,” we hear Glass’ wife say in his trances and that was all he needed to survive the series of torments. You think you know pain? Well just take a look at every thing he endures here: surviving a tribe raid, a painful D.I.Y. medication, swimming in an icy river, eating raw bison liver, riding a horse off a cliff, getting a few stabs, and dodging a few arrows here and there—all while trying not to succumb to hypothermia. I haven’t even mentioned that momentous bear scene that viewers are raving about. These are the grueling lengths Leo willingly committed himself to finally secure that elusive Oscar deliver his performance of a lifetime!

Being in pain for 90% of the movie, Leo’s character is seldom heard speak –that is, if you discount grunting, wincing or screaming in lieu of dialogues (in which he delivers as stupendously as he did in The Wolf of the Wall Street’s  infamous ‘Lemmon Drug/Cerebral Palsy’ scene). This makes the impression that the film could be summarized in five pages with an Arial 12 font. Some may even purport its thin plot outright stretched to a two and a half hour-movie. Majority of the lines go to the supporting roles who do equally great jobs: Domnhall Gleeson (plays a strong-willed Captain Henry), Will Poulter (plays a young and impressionable Jim Bridger), Forrest Goodluck (plays Hugh Glass’ adamant son, Hawk) and Tom Hardy (as the gritty scumbag Fitzgerald) blurting unintelligible lines in a redneck Texan accent. Apparently, Tom has a specialization on voice inaudibility/mumbling (noting his performance of Bane in The Dark Knight Rises).
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MOVIE REVIEW: The Revenant (2015) MOVIE REVIEW: The Revenant (2015)

The film does not really brag of its script but of its direction and cinematography. In Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), director Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki film one-take tracking shots of people walking through buildings, and once again they team up to showcase long incessant shots throughout The Revenant. Further, conventional wisdom is defied in their bold decision to shoot the film in natural light so as to highlight the stark contrast of the scene’s visceral, beyond-stunning beauty against the monstrosity of its violence.

If in Star Wars we learn that The Force is strong; in The Revenant we learn that the human spirit is stronger. In the end, the movie proves to be more of a survivalist tale than one of revenge. While it certainly isn’t one for everyone’s tastes, the film’s grandiose visual aesthetics— cinematography, editing, make-up, etc.—makes it worthy to be seen in theaters which yield the most gratifying viewing experience. Let me hazard a bold declaration: two decades from now, this movie would surely be part of the roster of classic movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoebZZ8K5N0

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