We’ve made it to film five on our list.
Whew. It’s been a long few days, filled with movie magic. The next bit of movie magic is The Revenant, starring Leo himself. As I sat in the theatre waiting for this movie to begin, I was musing on Leo’s run with the Academy Awards, and I began hoping that this would be the film that got him his Best Actor award. 
Ladies and gentlemen? I think he’s done it this time.
The Revenant is a beautifully rendered film based on the book of the same name by Michael Punke. Directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu, it mostly stars Leonardo DiCaprio, but we also get to see more of Tom Hardy who, as you may or may not recall, is in another film that is also nominated for Best Picture, Mad Max: Fury Road. (I thought he looked familiar!) This film, of course, is nothing like Mad Max, but yet here they all are. The Revenant was nominated for a whopping 12 Academy Awards, which is the most for 2016 of any films. It’s up not only for Best Picture but Best Director, Best Actor (DiCaprio), and best Supporting Actor (Hardy).
Here come the spoilers, so prepare yourselves.
It’s a daunting task, knowing where to even begin. The year is sometime before the Civil War (IMDb tells me 1823), and a bunch of fur trappers are out in the middle of nowhere (the internet says a U.S. territory which will later be the Dakotas) obviously hunting for pelts. They are ambushed by a group of American Indians, the Arikara, and lose a number of their men. Because Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is the guide, they all abandon ship and attempt to make their way back to camp on foot. This is bothersome to John Fitzgerald (Hardy), basically because he’s a jerk, but I’m sure there’s some sort of background information that plays a part in this as well. All is well and good, until Glass is mauled by a bear. And when I say mauled, I mean mauled. It was horrifying to watch. The good captain of the expedition refuses to leave Glass behind, so they attempt to make the journey with out him. It is at which point they discover it has turned from fall into the worst winter imaginable (which is probably par for the course in the Dakotas), and so they realize they won’t make it back attempting to carry Glass’s mangled body on their makeshift stretcher. Glass’s half Pawnee son Hawk, Fitzgerald, and a young man named Jim Bridger decide to stay behind, for a fee naturally, to “help Glass heal.” Of course, “help Glass heal” is code for give him a proper burial, since no one expects him to survive. Fitzgerald gets tired of waiting for Glass to give up the ghost, and attempts to kill him, but is interrupted by Hawk. So naturally, Fitzgerald kills Hawk and lies to Bridger about it. The next day, Fitzgerald tells Bridger he sees a group of 20 American Indians and that they have to run for their lives. There’s no way they can take Glass, so they abandon ship.
Think it’s horrible yet? Oh just wait.
At this point, we enter the purgatory of the film. It’s mainly a series of terrible, horrible things that happen to Glass. I’ll see if I can remember them all. He struggles to heal himself and re-learn how to walk. That happens, and then he’s discovered by the Arikara, who are searching for a woman who was stolen from their camp, Powaqa. So he floats down a river and goes over a bunch of waterfalls. Naturally, he’s freezing and still injured. He struggles and struggles until he meets a friendly Pawnee who is on his way south to find other Pawnee, since his whole family was murdered. Glass gets sick again, because, you know, bear mauling. His new Pawnee friend builds him a sweat lodge in the middle of a snow storm. (I swear that’s what it was, there were heated stones with snow melting over them, and the whole outside was covered with skin. It was definitely a sweat lodge.) Glass wakes up healed, after being covered with maggots, only to find his friend hanging from a tree, because apparently French trappers roll like that. Glass discovers that the French have taken Powaqa, so he kills the leader and takes a horse, freeing Powaqa and then leaving her to her own devices. He is free, with a horse, but without a friend, until the Arikara find him AGAIN (that’s really all that ever happens in this movie), so he rides as fast as he can to escape, and rides off a cliff. Which hurts. He somehow hasn’t broken any more bones, and so he sleeps inside the carcass of his dead horse in order to not freeze. Now he is alone, and healthy, but without a horse. So he starts walking. This is when he gets super extra miserable. Meanwhile, back at the fort, everyone has managed to get back, including Fitzgerald and Bridgers. The lone survivor of the French trading camp has made it to the fort as well, and tells them about a man who ruined everything. This man was carrying a canteen with a spiral cut into it. Bridgers recognizes it as the canteen he left with Glass, and Fitzgerald knows it as well. They go out to find the person, and discover Glass. Low and behold, the man can finally stop shivering. When they get back, Fitzgerald is gone, and the captain wants to go find him. Glass spends about 90 seconds pretending to heal so he can go along. They find Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald kills the captain, they have a fight to the death in the snow, Glass wins at great personal expense (Fitzgerald bites his ear off during the fight, Tyson-style), and then encounters that same damn group of Arikara, except they’re no longer dangerous because they found Powaqa and she’s home safe. The film ends with Glass struggling to make it back to the fort, because this is a film that believes in struggle.
The Revenant is a beautiful film. The footage is absolutely stunning. As I saw the opening shot of running water, I knew it was going to be a film I’d like to jump into, and it was, or it would be if it wasn’t so cold. In the land of infinite winter, everyone was freezing. There is gorgeous scenery, and everything is so perfectly done, including the sound design, underscoring, and costumes. It all feels very much like the 1800’s, a time when there was so little regulation that you could apparently just kill people and blame it on a renegade band of natives, or frostbite.
And of course, there is Leo. This film isn’t really about anything or anyone else. Sure, there are other humans walking around, and there are sub-plots about the French traders and the American Indians and how savage and dangerous they are, but really this is all about watching Leonardo DiCaprio struggle and flounder in various banks of snow. That’s all it is. And he does it so beautifully. I was very physically uncomfortable for most of the film. I think I was cold by proxy. It was hard to watch, but I’m glad that I saw it. There isn’t anything that isn’t well done about this movie.
Having said all those nice things, here’s the problem. The Revenant is about thirty minutes too long, at the very least. Most of the movie is a series of Leo getting hurt, followed by him getting better. Something goes his way, God takes it from him. He makes a friend, the friend gets killed. I began wondering if he was an incarnation of Job at one point. It’s an exhausting movie to watch, and not the sort of thing I’d recommend for a first date or a girl’s wine night. It also isn’t the kind of movie I’d want to see again. This is a piece of art, perhaps of high art; it’s not a print you’re going to hang on your wall. I appreciate it, but I didn’t necessarily enjoy it. You get burned out, you get fatigued, and you start not flinching when bad things happen. At about the two hour mark, you start wanting someone to give this man a damn Oscar so we can all be done and go home. It’s monotonous in the arduous beauty of the thing. It’s like the War and Peace of film.
There’s also the issue of its portrayal of American Indians. I understand that history is told by the victorious, and that as a story about an American trader in the 1800s, the natives are going to be the bad guys, but it did get tiring. I’d like to see a film that’s not Pocahontas or Dances with Wolves in which the protagonists are Native American. I would like that so very much. It’s not horribly out of keeping with the time period it’s meant to be in, and it’s not offensive per se, just exhausting.
I can’t imagine how DiCaprio isn’t going to take home the Oscar for Best Actor. I would recommend this film with a caveat that you choose when you’re watching it with care. You don’t want to bring this to grandma’s house and pop it in the DVD player. I expect it’s going to sweep the Academy Awards, and when you see it, you’ll realize you can’t even be mad about it.
But most of all, give Leo his Oscar so he can sit down for a second.
Live, Love, Learn,
Rebecca &