Last updated on June 3, 2016
The Revenant – Have you ever heard of the Sydney Pollack film Jeremiah Johnson? In it, the titular character (played by go-to handsome actor of the 1960s and 1970s, Robert Redford) decides to become a mountain man after surviving the Mexican War. Disgusted by warfare, his only desire in life is to live in the mountains and live out in the wilderness, with all the fun survival tropes that brings (wild animals, American Indians, etc). Honestly, these sorts of films don’t come around all that often, and they are a strange treat when they do: it’s mostly all action and visual storytelling, lacking complex narratives but making up for it by taking advantage of the aesthetic components of film-making. Like my dad says “there’s like 29 lines of dialogue in the whole movie”, but he loves it.
Enter The Revenant, a spiritual successor to Jeremiah Johnson. Alejandro G. Iñárritu, director of Birdman (a movie I actually liked!), brings us a weird combination of Leonardo DiCaprio grunting a whole lot in the wilderness and some absolutely magnificent cinematography. Iñárritu adapts the story of Hugh Glass, a guy who survived a bear attack in 1820s North Dakota, was left for dead by his trapper companions (because, seriously, who the heck survives a bear attack back then without a massive stroke of luck), woke up without any supplies to speak of, and traveled hundreds of miles to get his stuff back. Yeah, that guy was hardcore in the most American way possible!
But, a guy who survives like that just to get his material possessions returned doesn’t make for an interesting movie, so the Hugh Glass of The Revenant has a son with an American Indian woman (of what tribe, I can’t say with one hundred percent certainty, though Pawnee sounds about right). John Fitzgerald, a trapper on the expedition played by Mad Max…I mean, Tom Hardy, is paid $300 to stay with Glass until he passes; unfortunately, Fitzgerald is a pretty selfish guy, so he ends up murdering Glass’ son and leaving him for dead. So yay, we’ve got character motivation! Glass obviously wants to get revenge, because he saw Mad Max murder his son.
I guess that’s one way to do character motives, but it does seem cheap to basically write a villain into the story for no reason. Further, Glass hallucinates a lot on his way, so we get at least an inkling of his back story, but not enough to really provide emotional investment in the goings-on (not to mention this kind of delivery of that information is pretentious). The only emotions here come from the very real need for Glass to survive, and the pain of losing your entire family which demands vengeance. Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t help, either; I’m really confused why he won a Best Actor Oscar for this film in particular, because he’s done plenty of stellar work. I mean, basically all he does in this movie is get injured, grunt a lot, and then fight/shoot some dudes with DiCaprio’s “intense” face. He also eats raw meat, and recreates the Tauntaun scene from Empire Strikes Back! We never get a good sense of what Glass thinks about all this, as the character motivation’s so basic.
But hey, maybe that’s intentional! But, I’m not sure if Iñárritu made a wise decision in extending this film to two hours and thirty-six minutes. The first hour is, shall we say, compelling. The setting’s brutal, violent, and inhospitable, and I found it genuinely shocking at times (God, the brutal bear attack!). But, around the halfway point, the audience probably feels exhausted from DiCaprio Grunting; nothing much happens from Point A to Point B, really, other than Survival Movie Tropes, and the audience doesn’t get much for their trouble. Even as far as themes go, I’m not sure what these events represent, or what Iñárritu wants me to gleam from this presentation of the story. That’s a long time to sit through a movie with no clear, discernible themes or actual things that, you know, happen.
If there’s one thing that could clearly be enjoyed by everyone, though, it’s the best character in the whole film, Fitzgerald. Tom Hardy really becomes this character, a self-serving trapper who, really, just wants to go home with his pelts. He doesn’t have a life beyond trying to survive, and that comes at the expense of other people. Hardy plays him exactly in this way, with an accent that becomes indecipherable half the time yet also makes him quite a memorable “villain” (if you can call him that). Unlike Grunter (DiCaprio), Hardy actually gets something to do – i.e., dialogue – and that makes him the memorable centerpiece of an otherwise bleakly violent look into nature.
The Revenant is best enjoyed as a pretty straightforward wilderness survival film, really. An overly long survival movie, but we don’t get these too often, so I’m not all that picky. Hey, you might like it! Or you might not! It’s certainly an acquired taste any way you look at this film…
