Movie: My thoughts on The Revenant (spoilers!)
Blurb:: Inspired by true events, THE REVENANT captures one man's epic adventure of survival and the extraordinary power of the human spirit. In an expedition of the uncharted American wilderness, legendary explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is brutally attacked by a bear and left for dead by members of his own hunting team. In a quest to survive, Glass endures unimaginable grief as well as the betrayal of his confidant John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). Guided by sheer will and the love of his family, Glass must navigate a vicious winter in a relentless pursuit to live and find redemption.
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We finally got around to watching this one. We're trying to get through the various topical Oscar movies - I've got Creed and Beasts of No Nation also on my list of movies to watch. There are a lot of gloomy movies to watch and The Revenant is no exception.
Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu (director of Birdman which Dan made me watch and about which I wasn't that crazy), The Revenant is an incredibly beautiful but bleak and almost painful movie to watch.
The story behind The Revenant is adapted from the novel by Michael Punke which in turn is a fictionalised account of the life of frontier legend Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man who apparently survived a bear mauling and, badly injured, travelled more than 200 miles across the 1823 wilderness to safety. I'm not sure how much of that 'fact' is truth given that a lot of those old stories of the Wild West were wildly exaggerated, but it's an interesting tale.
The camerawork is as unique and almost distracting at times as you would expect. The cinematography is beautiful and the acting is quite perfect. Based on the interviews, it sounds like an extremely tough shoot in very gruelling conditions. The interviews constantly allude to the fact that it was shot using natural light and that the actors (particularly DiCaprio) suffered a lot.
In the movie, Glass, is leading a fur gathering expedition that is ambushed by Arikara warriors. Most of the expedition is killed but Glass manages to lead a small group of trackers to safety. Glass is attacked by a grizzly bear and suffers very severe injuries. The commander, Andrew Henry (played by the wonderful Domnhall Gleeson) is a compassionate man and refuses to euthanise or leave Glass to his fate. Unfortunately, the trying conditions mean that he cannot proceed with Glass so he elects to continue back to camp but leaves three men behind to care for Glass while he is still alive and then to give him a Christian burial when he dies. The three who remain are Glass’ half-Pawnee son, Hawk; a young man named Jim Bridger (played by Will Poulter from The Maze Runner) and the veteran John Fitzgerald, played by a gruff and sometimes almost incomprehensible Tom Hardy.
The movie is pretty brutal. Fitzgerald decides that the best solution outcome for everyone is to euthanise Glass. When Glass's son Hawk objects, Fitzgerald stabs him to death before Glass' helpless and horrified eyes, dumps a very much living Glass in a shallow grave and convinces Bridger that Glass is dead, Hawk has run away and they are in danger so they must leave.
I'm not sure how he does it, but Glass (fuelled by rage?) crawls out of his grave, treats his most serious wounds (including by way of cauterising them!) and starts off on a path of unswerving revenge. The next part of the movie is basically how to torture the Glass character as much as possible - both mentally and physically.
People are a little harsh to DiCaprio, claiming it's an Oscar grab but I'd assume that a lot of the torture's been determined by the director. I doubt it was DiCaprio saying: "Make me suffer as much as you can so that I can get an Oscar. I have to say though, that there some bits when I couldn't understand why he was eating raw bison liver and raw fish when he was sitting right next to a fire - but hey :)
Glass is shown as a man fuelled by rage and despair but who is also still able to feel compassion and caring towards others as he searches to find Fitzgerald.
There is an attempt in this movie to represent Native Americans in a more balanced way. While the Native Americans are also shown as warlike and killing many people, there are sympathetic characters and the Native Americans are shown as characters and people - not simply a faceless enemy. In fact, the 'villain' of the piece is Fitzgerald and even that is an interesting issue for me to ponder.
Bridger I find impossible to class as a villain in any way. He's young, naïve and genuinely did not want to leave Glass behind. There's also the moment in a sacked Native American village where Bridger stays silence when he sees a survivor and leaves some food behind for her as well.
Fitzgerald is an interesting character. Still bearing the horrific scars of a past scalping, he is a brutal and ruthless man who has learned to survive in what is clearly a very primitive and basic world. What he does to Hawk is horrific and unforgiveable. What he does to Glass is also horrific but part of me can kind of understand the choices that he made. Put in the same situation, I can't help wondering if Glass might have made the same decision in relation to Fitzgerald.
You want to see Fitzgerald as the victim but it's hard because you also see that he probably killed Hawk out of panic because he could easily have elected to kill Bridger when Bridger realises what has happened and blames Fitzgerald. Not only does he not kill him, he keeps him alive and looks after him. If Iñárritu had wanted to make Fitzgerald a classic victim, he'd have had him kill Bridger to silence him as well. By leaving him alive, he creates a much more complex and interesting character.
Glass' journey of suffering seems never-ending as we flash back to the death of his wife and the slaughter of her people, the attack that left his son's face burned and scarred forever, the fate of kind Hikuc who saves his life on more than one occasion and also looks after him is positively heart-breaking…
I can't say that I enjoyed it or that I would see it again, but I was impressed by DiCaprio's acting and also Tom Hardy's acting. Both men were amazing and put in powerful performances. I also enjoyed seeing 'General Hux' in this role. Female roles were limited, as you'd expect but Powaqa is strong and important despite being a 'victim' when we first meet her.