The Revenant

I feel a bit like a party pooper, especially as The Revenant was deemed worthy of three Oscars (Best Actor, Best Director and Best Cinematography), but I was underwhelmed by the film and not even just slightly underwhelmed.

There’s no denying that visually it is a feast, and the well-known scene where Leonardo DiCaprio is attacked and mutilated by a grizzly bear is an cinematic accomplishment all of its own. But: where’s the story?

As for that bear attack scene, it’s hard to believe – although given the CGI expertise filmmakers now have access to, it shouldn’t be – that it is entirely and utterly fake: the wood in which it takes place is made up entirely of ‘rubber’ tree props, the ‘bear’ is a stuntman in a blue CGI suit and DiCaprio is attached to several harnesses to allow him to seem thrown about by the bear.

That is all fine and dandy and makes for a thrilling experience. But it also leads to questions about Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s reported insistence that before filming, his troupe of actors should all go through a week’s boot camp so that they get to know and understand the hardship the characters they play suffered and also look the part when it comes to shooting.

Now, call me an old cynic but that reported week in boot camp is entirely the kind of story the studio press department would like to get out there to drum up a bit of interest — for which read potential profits — before the premiere.

‘Look,’ the studio PR tells us, ‘this is the real deal, this is actors really suffering for their art, this is serious filmmaking!’ For all of which the subtext is ‘this film is one you really won’t want to miss because it is special.’ Yes, but is it really?

Although Inarritu nabbed the Best Director Oscar, his cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki deserves a lot of the credit and it grabbed him of the little fellers for his camerawork.

Apparently Lubezki wanted to work with only natural lighting and eschew artificial lighting so much that filming lasted at most four hours a day.

Well, for this old cynic it really doesn’t quite stack up, and that snippet of news – as well as other stories ‘leaking out’ that filming was ‘so tough’ hardened crew simply walked out of the production in protest – most certainly didn’t do pre-publicity for the film (and whisper it quietly, the film’s Oscar chances) any harm at all. So what of the film? Well, what of it? What is it about?

Superficially, it is at tale of survival against all odds. Our mutilated hero, DiCaprio, is left for dead by two men charged with taking care of him – though the younger man is far less culpable than the nasty old Texan played by Britain’s Tom Hardy – yet despite his wounds, despite being at death’s door for quite some time, despite plunging into icy-cold water several times, despite his skin ‘dying’ (which I suppose is gangrene), despite being chased be Native Americans, despite riding over a cliff and plunging several hundred feet – despite it, all dear reader — let me catch my breath! — our intrepid hero manages to find his way back to civilisation after almost two months – it is never clear just how long it took. Well! If that isn’t worth an Oscar — Best Survivor Against Overwhelming Odds? — I don’t know what is.

Once back in civilisation, he is not a bit puffed and sets about chasing down nasty old Tom Hardy, and has enough energy to pretty much kill him. (He doesn’t actually do the deed — he remembers the wise old words of a Native American who befriends him on the way and leaves the dirty deed that to an troop of Native Americans who also want him dead). And then he dies. Fancy! What a man!

Well, I was pretty underwhelmed. I was underwhelmed by the lack of a story, I was underwhelmed by the vague mysticism which permeated it all but which really made little sense, I was baffled by the intermittent appearance of a gang of French trappers, I was underwhelmed by the gang of Native Americans whose chief is looking for his daughter, and I was underwhelmed by the film’s insistence that a man who was barely alive and who could, at first, only crawl everywhere, who ate hardly anything but roots and shoots should still find the energy and resolve to survive hyperthermia finally to get up and walk (and after his supposed exertions) appear to have lost very little weight.

Am I being unfair? Well, only if the whole film had not been pitched as ‘this is something entirely different – this is real!’ Once that line was put out and we were expected to swallow it, the only conclusion is that the film cheats.

At the end of the day it is in many ways an entirely impressive piece of filmmaking, but in many other ways it cuts to many corners to be taken completely seriously. For style it gets pretty much top marks, but sadly loses almost all of them quite badly on content.