Review: The Revenant

Year: 2015 (U.K Release 2016)

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu

Screenplay: Mark L. Smith, Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter

Synopsis is here

If there’s one thing that The Revenant does well, it’s scream about how BIG it is. It wants people to know just how MASSIVE a movie it is. Just look at the scope, everyone! Look at the huge, vast plains that its characters trudge and crawl through. Observe the scale of the films set pieces! Feel how impressive it all is. The film and its creators are right. This is an admirably impressive piece from a technical viewpoint.

The Revenant also an unbelievably committed film. Most of the film's hype has been quick to note just how demanding principal photography was and just how dedicated the filmmaking became. A large scale production captured in freezing remote locations with short filming windows (Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki shot using natural light), the gruelling 9 month shoot was so challenging that crew members quit and producers were added to get everything back on track.

In watching the film, it’s clear that for all the struggle and strife, The Revenant looks the business. The actors are nearly shallowed completely by the surroundings and there is a true feeling of grandness to the imagery that is hard to dismiss.

When we take away the challenge of the shoot as well as the prettiness of the piece, The Revenant does very little to capture the soul. Its scant narrative leaves little to hold on to, yet its overlong running time seems to insist that the film has importance. The truth is The Revenant takes a long time to say very little. The film is impressive from a distance. Its bombastic sequences are definitely worth watching on the biggest screen possible, while the cast show full commitment at every turn.

However, in comparison to films such as Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) The Revenant lacks the chaotic constitution of man being lost to the all-encompassing power of nature. That's Herzog's area. Iñárritu is still all about the misery of it all than the absurdity. As with the likes of Biutiful (2010), The Revenant’s conventional revenge tale gets so wrapped in the pain of it all, that it becomes difficult to find compelling.  The Revenant just loves to yell about how painful the plight is.

The dedication from everyone involved is commendable, yet throughout the film feels uninvolving. Unfortunately, like Revolutionary Road (2008) this is one of those performances in Leo doesn’t want to be shown phoning it in. Far from it. The dial gets cranked up to eleven through every moment DiCaprio crawls, mumbles and grimaces. This is BIG acting, but it doesn’t distract you from the fact he’s laying it on quite thick. The fact that the elements made the performance a challenge, doesn’t mean that you must in turn love the display. Tom Hardy, as the film’s antagonist fairs better, with his bulging eyes and Jeff Bridges-like drawl. Both bring a certain intensity, but Hardy is given more to play with. A problem considering that this is a film built to show DiCaprio’s tactility.

We'd used to say a film would have every frame is like a painting. Now, the film, like The Revenant, they feel like HDR images. Despite the visceral "ugly" beauty of the visuals, the film seems stripped of the beastliness of its story. The Revenant lacks the transitional nature of a Western like Dead Man (1995) or the transgressive power of a revenge movie like Dead Man's Shoes (2004). The film’s final moments do little don’t reveal the pettiness of revenge, but instead left me feeling short changed. Looks and a contemptuous shoot make The Revenant and big screen curiosity, but don’t expect any devils in the details. This is a film in which everyone is screaming to hear their own echo.  

Review: Biutiful

Year: 2010 (U.K Release 2011)
Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Screenplay: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Starring: Javier Bardem

Synopsis is here:

Films like Biutiful remind me why many dislike foreign language films. It is not necessarily down to the subtitles, although the amount of remakes say otherwise. It's stumbling upon a film that decided that it wants to "move" you with it's profound sadness and despair. I'm fine with films that wish to be downbeat and I'm completely ok with all out depressing; but Biutiful is so somber, so tragic and so absurd it almost comes off a little silly.

Biutiful with it's misspelled ironic title lays everything on too thickly. We are told from the start that our protagonist Uxbal (Bardam) has a few months to live and the film decides to go down from here. There doesn't seem to be any wish for us to really feel for this characters plight, only know that shit happens, when it rains it pours and Job had it bloody easy. Everything is drenched in a melodramatic gloom from the seems to be no escape, redemption or joy. Once again I don't need joy in a film to gain something from it but halfway through I was almost begging Uxbal just to top himself and relive everyone of the misery. We're given mistrusting brothers, bipolar, estranged spouses who work as prostitutes, depressed, troubled children and I haven't even got to the exploited workers...safe to say their story isn't a bundle of fun.


To add this we are given an over proud, criminal Christ figure who believes that his own pain must be hidden because everyone hurts. PLUS HE CAN SEE THE DEAD BECAUSE HE HIMSELF IS DYING. In real life we cannot give to every charity as we must (and do) have a sense of the internal. This is not as selfish as it is true. There's only so much that we can do as people. Iñárritu wishes to not only to drown Uxbal in his many sorrows, plying slabs of depression like slabs of butter on toast but also pivots all this mechanical manipulation on the fact that Uxbal just thinks to highly of everything to seek true solace or help. It's a frustrating principal made even more annoying by the simple factor that Iñárritu labours over this for almost three hours. It's just too much and in the end, the whole film feels like all 26 years of Eastenders Christmas specials slapping you in the face with some of the sixth sense/hereafter/the haunting in Connecticut thrown in. 

With all the self-important misery going on, it's very crucial to be invested in Javier Bardem and it's not hard to see why the man has gained the plaudits. Bardem is a wonderfully human actor and his presence makes all the wallowing semi-bearable. But here it's just not enough because there's just so much suffering and way too much naval gazing. I felt like a was slammed through the wringer before the dreaded cancer strengthen his grip. The worst thing about the whole thing the pointless feeling I gained with the films last moments. Everything feels as it was almost all in vain and you've just viewed this man's last months just to watch him die. Biutiful is a film that has none of the absurd wit placed with A Serious Man, nor does it have the gentle poignancy and retrospect which was infused within A Single Man. Reminding myself of Iñárritu's back catalog I found myself more disappointed. 21 Grams, Amores Perros are not only superbly crafted films (this is also well put together technically) but also more focused and parred down pieces which I both found genuine heart to. Biutiful is not interested in heart unless it features some sort of stabbing.

In a cinematic world where a horror film would be looked down upon having masochistic wish to display psychical pain. Get rid of the blood and the make same amount of grief emotional and you've got yourself an award piece it seems. Quite simply Biutiful, isn't.