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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.

6 comments:

  1. is there a one thing that you appreciate? you ask, where is point? in Hemingway's stories. You ask where is story in this blog....Some things do not give stories or points rather just elements to create your own story out of it. You ever frustrated over your life? or thought about your life and asked why am I alive? or what is the point of all this ? Because that is what life is, a series of random events.. and probably you will never get the answer that what is the point of all this, just like you will never get the point in Hemingway's stories. Because you will only get it, when you see your life streaming through his writings.....

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    1. There are many things I appreciate, but I don’t quite know how to respond to your rather incoherent splatter of questions.

      To describe life as ‘a series of random events’ is simplistic nonsense. Perception is all, and there are as many perceptions of what life ‘is’ as there are men and women on the planet, each of which is, of necessity, unique (i.e. I’m not making some kind of romantic statement that ‘we are all individuals’). Ask the parents of a new-born child whether they agree that life is ‘a series of random events’.

      As for The Revenant, it was a marvellous exercise in technical filmmaking, but there had to be more, and there wasn’t. It was missing one crucial element for which all the technical expertise did not compensate, And that’s if you can accept the many times the film jumped the shark. I always find even doing so once is once to many.

      Hemingway: the guy had a modicum of talent (but, as it happens, so did and do a lot of writers) but certainly not half as much in his conceit he thought he did.

      Crucially for all the ‘hard, difficult work’ he insists - again and again and again - he did, far too many of his stories are left incomplete. He seems to have taken the view that as he, Ernest Hemingway, wrote the stories, they must be good. Try again, Ernie, it ain’t that simple.

      You can’t but wonder: DID he actually re-read the stories, edit and re-write them? You have to ask that for a writer whose was once praised for his ‘lean, hard and athletic narrative prose’, his style very soon became decidedly flabby and shapeless. He seems to have taken the view that as he, Ernest Hemingway, wrote the stories, they must be good, no qustion. Try again, Ernie, it ain’t that simple.

      In many of his better known stories - The Killers and Hills Like White Elephants, for example - there are odd lacunae and technical flaws which a better - more talented - writer would soon have spotted and rectified. Just how, well, it doesn’t matter how, that is up to her or him and that is part of their talent and skill. But Hemingway? He just did not seem to notice and the oddities remained, no doubt regarded by apologists as ‘part of his style’.

      These following examples are from The Capital Of The World, one of his later short stories and by then he had certainly lost the plot. It first appeared in Esquire magazine for whom he was doing a lot of work (and earning very good money). Did Hemingway seriously imagine this was ‘good writing’:

      “The dishwasher, whose name was Enrique, watched him critically and sneeringly” - ‘watched . . . sneeringly’? Really?

      and

      “The priests left immediately after the picador, hurriedly conscious of being the last people in the dining-room” . . . - ‘hurriedly conscious’? Really?

      This is adolescent writing. Yes, it can go down in a first draft, but a writer of lean, hard and athletic narrative prose would have realised it needed drastic revision. Hemingway obviously did not.

      You say I ‘will never get the point’ of Hemingway’s stories: well, certainly not of this one, in which the ‘universal author’ - a real ‘modernist’ would hate one of those - has insight into the lives and private thoughts of each of the several characters he presents, a story which meanders mercilessly before settling on the sad accident in which the young boy dies, an account, though, which makes the rest of the story - the other bullfighters, the priests, the young woman who isn’t a whore, the coward - completely irrelevant.

      That, though, is down to how Hemingway wrote: he planned nothing but saw where writing would take him. Fair enough, but THEN you re-write, re-shape, re-edit, re-write again.

      Sorry, Anonymous, I stick by every word I write about Hemingway. I can’t deny I am almost fascinated by his life story and the mythology he managed to get the world to accept. But I am not fascinated by the writer who, in hindsight, had the luck of Old Nick, nor his work, which veers to the very bad very early on.

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    3. The parents of the newborn child might have planned a fantastic future for them or the child. And the life is a series of unfortunate events is perhaps a stupid idea for them since bringing a child into this world isn't an unfortunate event. Now assume a surreal incident in which the mother and kid die in a car accident just a couple of days after the baby’s birth. Now The father is devastated and has no idea what to do in the future. It might sound stupid too but you can't deny it completely. Was that thing planned too? No, It’s an unfortunate event that happened. And sadly you have to face it. If you think that all the strings of your life are in your hands and you can control or learn in your life through the experience of the world; well you are right but not completely. Because your life is not entirely in your hand and that's what I mean by life as a series of unfortunate events. This what happened after World War 1. People had no idea about what to do in their lives. The lost generation is the perfect term for them. And I absolutely loved ‘The sun also rises.’ One critic (I don't know who) said this novel starts at nowhere and ends at nowhere. Isn't that life itself? and yeah of course we plan things but what are the possibilities that it'll go exactly as we have planned? And that's why the end is “Isn't it pretty to think so?” Our existence is absurd, uncertain.

      And I don't know, I love his writing, man. If he is really a bad writer then James Joyce wouldn't have quoted this "He [Hemingway] has reduced the veil between literature and life, which is what every writer strives to do. Have you read 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place'?...It is masterly. Indeed, it is one of the best short stories ever written."

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    4. I started a response (and finished one) but it became so long, I decided to post it on my blog. You can read it at https://pfgpowell-1.blogspot.com/2021/04/in-response-to-deckard-who-he-oh-never.html

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