I saw “The Revenant” last night. This might be a long one. No shock there, right?
I like Leonardo DiCaprio just fine. I think he’s a pretty solid actor, and he generally turns in a pretty solid performance. I know everyone thinks he’s been robbed of an Oscar every year ever, but I can’t say that I agree- I think he’s pretty good, and he’s generally beaten out by someone great. That said, he’s the main character of “The Revenant,” and his performance was…pretty good. Sorry. He was perfectly functional, and had some great moments, but it wasn’t a perfect, Oscar-worthy performance. Between the two “like Cast Away but in a different setting” films this year, Matt Damon from “The Martian” delivered, in my opinion, a better performance.
However, this film did have a couple of truly standout actors. Tom Hardy stole almost every scene that he was in- it was truly wonderful to watch, even if you could call his voice “redneck Bane.” My favorite performance from the whole thing, though, was Domhnall Gleeson, as Captain Andrew Henry. He has one scene between him and Will Poulter (who also did a fine job) that was easily my favorite sequence of the film, for its raw emotion.
So, the acting was good, approaching great in several places. So too was the camerawork. This film favored those grand, sweeping shots that you see in nature documentaries, only without the sweep. “The Revenant” was very content to let shots linger, showing us a massive piece of landscape, with a character trudging along in the middle of it, lost in the vastness of their surroundings. It was all very pretty and impressive, particularly the use of light and fog, which allowed for some truly gorgeous shots.
The soundtrack… now that I’m thinking back on it, I can’t remember much of it. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, for two reasons. One, this is the kind of film that benefits from contemplative silence. Two, the one piece of music I do remember was a sudden, heart-rending swell, straight out of a Hallmark movie.
Now we come to the plot, and the scenes in general. Look, “The Revenant” is essentially “Cast Away” meets “Hatchet” (the book about wilderness survival, not the slasher film) meets “Kill Bill.” And that’s fine with me. I like a good survival movie, and I like a good revenge movie, and I really liked “Hatchet” (the book about wilderness survival, not the slasher film). And the parts of the film that are following that storyline are great. The action is intense, watching DiCaprio’s Glass survive is interesting, and the cinematography is really pretty. Unfortunately, this film suffers from several different conditions.
The first is “Gladiator” disease, or possibly “Zack Snyder-itis.” I like “Gladiator,” and I like most of Snyder’s films, but if you’ve seen any of those, I think you’ll know what I’m talking about. The incessant flash-back scenes, shot in a really, REALLY artsy manner, both to generate sympathy for the main character, and to make the movie look really artsy. The difference is that both “Gladiator” and “Man of Steel” show the characters that show up in the artsy flash-backs beforehand, allowing us to know them even a little bit, so that we care about them. In both cases, it shows us what the title character is fighting for. This just wasn’t the case in “The Revenant,” as the character that features most prominently in those scenes has (spoilers, but not really) been dead since well before the movie began, and DiCaprio isn’t fighting for them.
The second condition doesn’t have as pithy a name. It’s something I blame on mainstream drama in general, so I’ll go with “TWD-osis” (that’s “The Walking Dead,” by the way). This basically means that the plot is driven by what will generate the most drama, rather than what makes sense for the scene in question. It’s not a constant issue, and it’s a relatively minor one, but it did happen once or twice, and it was pretty obvious when it did. I think I can probably blame most of these issues on the book, though, as this film is an adaptation.
Thirdly, this movie has chronic B-plot. There is a side story in this film that takes way, WAY too much time out of the main plot. It is actually staggering how pointless the whole thing is, as well- I was waiting for a payoff, something that would make me think, “Oh, that’s why they included this,” but it never happened.
Finally, fatally, this movie was Sundance Syndrome. It’s trying so hard to be an arthouse film that it comes right around and starts being irritating and/or annoying. As an example of each: there is a moment during a flashback scene where the deceased character appears levitating, facedown, above our main character, who is lying on the ground, looking up, and they just stare at each other. I burst out laughing here, because it didn’t look poignant- it looked ridiculous. On a less funny, and more annoying note, there were multiple occasions when DiCaprio’s breath would fog up the camera lens. In an attempt to be more artsy, the film completely pulled me out of its setting. There was nothing nearby that could have been fogging up- he was breathing directly into a camera. These decisions are baffling to me.
I can’t say that the film isn’t good, because it is. It’s got some pretty great acting, some pretty great cinematography, and some pretty great action. But I can say that the film is disappointing, because it is, depressingly so. I wanted so much to love this one, and I just couldn’t. It tried too hard to be too many things, and so none of its many hats are quite the right fit. I’ve said before that a film should be either “Interstellar” (i.e. a work of art, a great film), or “Sahara” (i.e. a lot of fun, a great movie), in order to be good, and that some films can be both. “The Revenant” was suited more for the “Sahara” camp, I think, but it tried far too hard to be “Interstellar” as well, and so it didn’t quite reach either camp. It’s worth watching, particularly if you don’t analyze things as incessantly as I do, but it’s hardly the top film of the year. Well, I mean, it kind of is, since it’s one of the first major releases this year, but you know what I mean.