Directed by:
Alejandro González IñárrituCinematography:
Emmanuel LubezkiCast:
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Duane Howard, Arthur Redcloud, Melaw Nakehk'o, Grace Dove, Lukas Haas (more)VOD (5)
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Inspired by true events, The Revenant is an epic story of survival and transformation on the American frontier. While on an expedition into the uncharted wilderness, legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally mauled by a bear, then abandoned by members of his own hunting team. Alone and near death, Glass refuses to succumb. Driven by sheer will and his love for his Native American wife and son, he undertakes a 200-mile odyssey through the vast and untamed West on the trail of the man who betrayed him: John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). What begins as a relentless quest for revenge becomes a heroic saga against all odds towards home and redemption. (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment)
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Revenant is undoubtedly a great movie. It has genius camera, brutally frozen locations, two absolutely perfect scenes and Leonardo DiCaprio, whose performance is an acting orgasm like never before. If not before, then for this performance he simply has to get the Oscar award. Personally, I think that his showing off is beyond the line. The less talking there is, the more action is happening on the screen. Leo is gutting a horse to hide in his internals or eating raw meat to survive. Plus, he survives a lot ofunbelievable stuff that no average citizen of the Czech Republic would be able to survive. All of that for the most classic reason of all – for revenge. It’s a shame that the creators stretched the story so much. They could’ve spared us some of the flashbacks. Two and a half hours is a lot of time for a story like that. Anyway, I admit that the first scene of the attack of the Native Americans and then the scene of the bear attacking Leo will stick in my memory as the best I’ve seen in a pretty long time.
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As long as during the first 30 minutes we capture the amazing promo reel of Lubezki's camera, which equilibristically flows through the space between panoramic and contact shots, it's captivating. But then comes the need to tell a story and work with the characters, and the master of shallowness Alejandro is suddenly back with everything that it encompasses. The means of storytelling diverts attention from what is told to us. The film has an incredibly-compiled screenplay full of coincidences, which is supposed to be based on ultra-realism, but in fact is constantly slipping out of it towards an attempt at a metaphysical anti-western. The symbolic plane, the game with landscape and flashy symbols, is so superficial and clueless that it’s shameful. Although Leo breathes like a frightened mule and practices the crawling lessons he learned in The Wolf of Wall Street, he basically has no acting to do (I was almost sorry for him during the scene in the ruined temple). The film becomes a superficial high school exercise in Jack London's tenacity, which, thanks to a number of physical details, unfortunately grows into a parody of itself - Glass is Iron Man between trappers and Meresiev of the 19th century. It is not a celebration of the tenacity of man, but of the superfluous ego of a creator who puts himself above the story and the character as a dubious god. Revenant is a rare spectacle, an intellectual exploitation and a film that brings nothing more than magnificent filming of landscapes and action. Otherwise, it's a boring camping guide and a college of starting fires. Where there is nothing, not even the tinder burns. Metaphysics for the poor from the grizzly among the overrated filmmakers. P.S. The bear takes it all, the best CGI scene ever. [50%]
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In the same way that we talk about the “Hitchcockian” attributes of some thrillers and use the term “Lynchian” to describe weird films, we may soon find ourselves relating the name of Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu to movies around which media buzz is artificially created. As was the case with Birdman from the year before last, the hype that accompanies The Revenant is far greater than the attention that the film deserves based on its cinematic qualities. With their respective skills, the dream team of Iñárritu, Lubezki and DiCaprio could have made one of the most powerful adventure movies of recent years. Unfortunately, their straightforward B-movie plot couldn’t be “boosted” by the fluid camerawork, which performs even more captivating tricks than we could see in I Am Cuba (for me, the benchmark when rating films with sophisticated long shots). The story of a man chewed on by a bear, who returns “home” in the manner of Odysseus, is interspersed with mystical dream (hallucination) sequences, dialogue about God reincarnated as a squirrel and manifestations of the devastating nature of unregulated capitalism. Iñárritu, who always takes delight in the suffering of his characters, would be the ideal director for a raw western in the traditional mould, in which violence serves as the main means of communication, sets the action in motion, sets up the plot twists and solves problems. Unfortunately, as pointed out above, he decided to communicate meanings in ways other than through spectacular violence. With words, for example. The use of violence as a central narrative element is justified by its insertion into the unsteady framework of a family melodrama, enchanted by Indian mysticism. I am convinced that The Revenant would have been a tonally and rhythmically more balanced film if it had not so stubbornly pretended to have philosophical depth and tremendous spiritual reach. Unlike in the case of Tarkovsky or Malick, the spiritualism in this film is limited to empty words and unoriginal symbolism. The formalistic aspect is in no way uplifting. Besides the motif of the spiral engraved on the canteen, for example, the cyclical concept of time, which is inherent to the indigenous American population, only highlights the repetitiveness of the protagonist’s suffering. Otherwise, the film has a thoroughly standard structure, with precisely timed twists, conscientious utilisation of all motifs and a satisfying ending that leaves no essential question unanswered. It’s okay for one-dimensional characters to serve as tools for conveying information and pushing the narrative in the required direction, but I don’t think it’s okay if they serve no other purpose, despite the film’s attempt to use them to convince us of its own inventiveness and its commitment to a cause (in this case, the interests of Native Americans; see the documentary about the making of A World Unseen, which is basically very naïve anti-capitalist and environmentalist agitprop). For me, the most fitting metaphor for the film, which outwardly criticises pragmatism but is at the same time supremely pragmatic in the handling of its characters and themes, remains the gif of the lead actor as Hugh Glass buried alive, torn and broken, clawing for his dreamed-of Oscar with his last ounce of strength. 65%
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One hundred and fifty minutes of art that offers real physical adventure in only two battles. There's clearly something wrong with a film where you spend most of the runtime thinking about the freezing crew on the other side of the camera. I haven't seen something so "wanted" in a long time. Just hand over the coveted statue and let this one fall in as technically honest and damn difficult filmmaking, which perhaps nobody even cares about in the end. PS: Hardy beats DiCaprio by a dead bear and half a horse.
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There aren't many of these realistically dirty, narratively unkempt films that feel like the filmmakers have actually gone back 200 years, and actually I can't remember any from the last few years. Raw action, where you can feel the blood and pain, physical contact fights taken in one long shot, and beautiful visual compositions of breathtaking nature; and snow and mud and filthy actors everywhere – the film crew must have had their fun too. The simple story doesn't hurt at all, because it goes to the heart of the characters and their physical and mental hardships. The complete opposite of the mannerist, self-absorbed Birdman, where I didn't care about the characters' fates at all. Together with Sicario, the best film of 2015.
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