Why not save the best for last? It doesn’t always work out that way, but The Revenant was the final movie released in 2015. In fact, except for in a few select theaters in a few select cities, you couldn’t see the film until January 7th. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely it was. It seems like we’ve seen trailers for months building this movie up. Each time I saw a preview, I couldn’t help but get excited. I believe that this might have been my most anticipated movie since Shutter Island, and with that movie, I had reason to be wary because it was a 2010 movie released in February. You usually don’t get the best films of the year released that early in the year. While Shutter Island exceeded expectations, The Revenant was all that and more. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Great Gatsby) has been burned by the Academy many times before. While The Revenant is his fifth Academy Award nomination for acting, he should have at least three or four more. None of those past omissions matter now, as DiCaprio is the front runner to win Best Actor this year. I wouldn’t quite qualify him as a lock to win, but it is only a two-actor race, and his performance was more impressive than the fabulous performance given by Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl.
It’s funny what a year can do to change a perspective. Last year I was a complete seller of Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 21 Grams). The race for Best Director came down to González Iñárritu for Birdman or Richard Linklater for Boyhood. If you read any of my posts for the Academy Award-nominated movies last year, you know that I was pretty down on the Best Director nominees as a whole. Nonetheless, I did not enjoy Birdman, and while I didn’t think Boyhood was the greatest movie in the world, I thought the directing aspect of Boyhood was incredibly more difficult than Birdman. I was less bothered that Birdman won Best Picture than I was that González Iñárritu beat Linklater. In my opinion, anybody could have directed Birdman, but it took someone with extreme dedication, patience, and vision to direct Boyhood. Long story short is that a year ago, I was not González Iñárritu’s biggest fan. Flash forward to this year, and I think he was the perfect director for The Revenant. I have read over and over how difficult shooting was for this film. Shot on locations in both Canada and Argentina, and using only natural light, you could see the actor’s freezing breath in just about every scene. González Iñárritu’s obsession with getting every shot impeccable had some actors referring to the filming as a living hell. But what was a living hell to some of them was pure perfection for us as we watched this epic masterpiece. I am back to being a buyer of González Iñárritu.
DiCaprio is incredible as Hugh Glass, a frontiersman and fur trapper who, in 1823, is hired by Rocky Mountain Fur Company, a company started by two men, including Major Andrew Henry (a nearly unrecognizable Domhnall Gleeson – Ex Machina, Brooklyn) to participate in a South Dakota fur-trapping expedition. For those unfamiliar with fur-trapping, it means slaughtering animals (in this case, deer (elk), buffalo, etc.) and stripping them of their fur. The pelts (or the hair, skin, or wool) are sold and made into coats. Naturally, there were dangers to this profession, including the wild animals, weather conditions, running the risk of getting forever lost, and encountering dangerous Native American tribes. This included the Arikara Indians, who serve as one of the antagonists in this movie. Without giving too much away, the Arikara are more upset with the white hunting on their land than they usually would be and unleash an all-out assault on Glass’s party of near 40.
The parts that all of us know about this movie before we even see it is that Glass is attacked brutally by a bear. In a series of two attacks, the bear does everything to Glass except kill him. You can see the flesh being torn off of Glass’s skin and his bones shattering when the bear flips him onto his back. His men find him only after the bear has been killed and is pinning a hapless Glass to the ground. His wounds are thought to be so severe that it is feared (more like well-known) by all that he will not make it. Knowing that it will be impossible to carry a dying man across the mountainous terrain, Henry offers a large sum of money to the three men who will stay behind with Glass, while the others return to their base location before returning with supplies that can hopefully save Glass’s life. With the Arikara still on their tale to kill the white men, Henry knows it will be challenging to convince three men to stay. This is why he offers such a large sum of money to anyone willing to wait. If he can’t get three men to agree, he will be forced to kill Glass to put him out of his misery. Two volunteers quickly step up, including Glass’s mixed-race son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) and the youngest and most impressionable man in the party Jim (a nearly unrecognizable Will Poulter – The Maze Runner, We’re the Millers). When Henry tells him that they need one more and nobody steps up, both boys offer to give their share of the money offered to any other person who will stay. Enter John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy – The Drop, Warrior), the most villainous character you’ll meet in film this year. After Hawk and Jim forfeit their potential sums of money, Fitzgerald jumps on the chance to stay behind, knowing that he can make $300 in just a couple of days. This is particularly easy for him after realizing that the pelts they were forced to leave behind might never be recovered.
Without giving anything away, we know this is a movie about revenge and that the good guy is Glass (DiCaprio), and the bad guy is Fitzgerald (Hardy). After this bear attack, Glass is left for dead, and that he fights for his survival to get back at Fitzgerald. It is the ultimate good guy/bad guy story of the year. It doesn’t feel forced. At 156 minutes, there is plenty of time to develop the story and develop the characters. There is no choreography in any of the action scenes. There is nothing to make these characters look pretty, either in terms of their appearance or their actions. It’s just a good old-fashioned story of revenge.
The movie has the inspired by actual events component. Which parts occurred, and which parts are fictitious? You can research these things either before the film or after. I would not read them before but understand the potential desire afterward. If you’d like to see the similarities and differences between what happened, what is believed to happen, and what did not happen, this site will help (http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/revenant/).
There is plenty of flashbacks and foreshadowing in this movie. I’ve said numerous times in other reviews that when flashbacks or foreshadowing are done correctly, they can make a good or great film unforgettable. If there aren’t enough flashbacks (or foreshadowing), you wonder why they are in the movie at all. But, on the other hand, if there are too many of them, it detracts from the story. González Iñárritu did a masterful job of balancing his flashbacks and foreshadowing. Each flashback and each foreshadow is an essential piece of the overall story.
As mentioned, there isn’t a lot of dialogue in this film. There are a lot of DiCaprio grunts. It’s also a movie where DiCaprio doesn’t smile one time. His eyes tell the stories. He may have won an Oscar because of the picture he paints with just his eyes. And I’ll be honest when I say I tried to watch this film as a critic and not a fan. Halfway through this movie, I thought his performance was outstanding but thought he would fall short of Redmayne. He needed all 156 minutes to come back from the dead slowly and really show his story of survival and buy into the belief that he will do whatever it takes to avenge. It’s incredible acting and mesmerizing film-making. By the end of the film, there are specific topics you can debate and certain ones you can’t. I am not sure the debate exists anymore between the best lead-acting performance of the year. Redmayne was fantastic in The Danish Girl, but DiCaprio was better in The Revenant. I also think the cinematography is hard to debate too. I believe it wins Oscars for these two categories. I believe González Iñárritu should win, but I don’t think he will. I believe Tom McCarthy will win for Spotlight, a movie that I didn’t think was as good as The Revenant but had fewer flaws. I think this has a chance for Best Picture, but I also think this award goes to Spotlight or maybe even a movie like Brooklyn. I think Tom Hardy should win for Best Supporting Actor. I’ve seen some great supporting performances (including Emory Cohen in Brooklyn, Jacob Tremblay in Room, Mark Rylance in Bridge of Spies, and Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight). Hardy’s Fitzgerald is incredible, though, and he makes DiCaprio look even stronger. They aren’t in a ton of scenes together but are very intertwined. Cohen, Tremblay, and Rylance all helped make their movies stronger. Hardy helped make his movie my choice for movie of the year.
Wow! What an incredible movie! If you can handle the violence, its length and don’t mind a film that doesn’t have a ton of dialogue, I think you’ll love this movie. If you love movies like Gladiator or Braveheart, I don’t think it’s possible not to like The Revenant.
Plot 10/10
Character Development 10/10
Character Chemistry 10/10
Acting 10/10 (DiCaprio will win Best Actor and Hardy should win for Best Supporting Actor)
Screenplay 10/10
Directing 10/10 (González Iñárritu could win Best Director though it likely will go to Tom McCarthy who directed the flawless Spotlight, especially after González Iñárritu won the award for last year’s Birdman)
Cinematography 10/10 (should win Best Cinematography. It could also win for makeup/hairstyles)
Sound 10/10 (could win Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing, though I think Mad Max: Fury Road has a better chance)
Hook and Reel 10/10 (the fight sequence in the first 30 minutes is comparable to movies like The Last of the Mohicans or Gladiator)
Universal Relevance 10/10 (the true story that over the years slowly became a legend feels very familiar)
100%
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- The Grey
- Apocalypto
- The Patriot
- In The Heart of the Sea
- Everest