Sunday, January 17, 2016

The Revenant (2015)

Grisly yet transcendent, gruesome yet ethereal, this story of a man's struggle to survive unthinkable tortures is difficult to watch but impossible to ignore. Jack loved it. I had a hard time but stayed in my seat with my hands shielding my eyes at the worst sections, e.g. when our hero Hugh Glass is mauled by a bear (grisly, er, grizzly) or the battles with the Arikari (pronounced a-REE-ka-ree) Indians.

Twelve Oscar nominations isn't a record (fourteen is the best so far), but it's pretty darn good--Best Picture, Leading Actor, Supporting Actor, Directing, Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup/Hair, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, and Special Effects. See how it's doing in my alphabetical list of awards and nominations.

As the leading actor, Leonardo DiCaprio (last blogged in The Wolf of Wall Street) expresses much with only his eyes and wordless grunts. Tom Hardy (most recently in Mad Max: Fury Road) is a great supporting actor as the mercenary Fitzgerald we love to hate. Domhnall Gleeson (last in Brooklyn) gives us an upstanding Captain Henry and Will Poulter (profiled in We're the Millers) a young and idealistic member, Bridger, of the trapper company.

I've long been a fan of director/co-writer Alejandro G. Iñárritu (he's dropped his middle name González since winning three Oscars for Birdman--Best Picture, Directing, Original Screenplay) and his usual cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki won for Birdman and is nominated here for his magnificent camera work, including extensive use of birdseye lenses (scroll down to the fifth picture in this link for an example) and almost exclusive use of natural light only. Here's a fascinating clip of Iñárritu narrating a scene in the movie (mild spoiler alert--you might want to wait until you've seen the movie). The production was grueling due in part to shooting in the freezing cold in Canada and Argentina, among other locations.

The script by Iñárritu and Mark L. Smith (new to me) is "based in part on the novel by" Michael Punke, which is based in part on the life of the real Hugh Glass in 1820s America. The title is derived from the French verb revenir, to return, and means a person who returns or a ghost.

Even with twelve nominations, one is glaringly missing: for the composers Ryuichi Sakamoto (I loved The Last Emperor (1987) and The Sheltering Sky (1990); he also had songs in Iñárritu's Babel (2006)) and Alva Noto (AKA Carsten Nicolai--I've not heard of him with either name). It's very different from Antonio Sanchez' drumming in Birdman. You can listen to the whole hour plus soundtrack on this link. I'm enjoying it immensely as I write. Over an hour of soundtrack in a movie that's two hours thirty-six minutes long.

Don't drink (because you'll have to leave to relieve yourself) nor eat (because you might lose your lunch at the visceral images) before going in. Then meet with friends afterwards in a nice warm place and have some laughs (I did that and had nightmares anyway). For the record, when I saw Reservoir Dogs in 1982, I knew about the torture scene, and walked out when it began, listening outside the door to the screams and music, and then returned to my seat when the noise died down. I might have done that when we saw this Friday, but 1. there were lots of people between me and the door, 2. there were many violent sequences, and 3. I remembered that in Iñárritu's Amores Perros (2000) the dogfighting dogs looked like stuffed animals and it wasn't so bad, so I hoped this would be like that. Not so much.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are averaging 81 and 87% as it maintains its number two place in its fourth week at the box office. Like I said, impossible to ignore. Serious movie buffs need to see this before the Oscars on February 28.

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