The Revenant

 

You know that person in your life who you respect but don’t really like? He’s really good at what he does, she knows a lot about a lot of things, but when it comes right down to it, you would rather not spend any time with them because you just don’t like them? Yeah, if the movie The Revenant was a person, that’s the person it would be. I can respect it and recognize its technical achievement and even admire certain things about it without liking it much at all. 

The film is very loosely inspired by real events and people. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a real-life trapper and tracker working for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. He guides a group of men collecting animal pelts during the just barely post-Lewis and Clark days of continental exploration.

Glass gets mauled by a grizzly bear when he accidentally gets between it and her cubs. Thanks to a world class special effects team, we get an excruciatingly  believable and detailed view of what it would be like to be attacked by one of the largest and most deadly land mammals on earth.

The conflict of the film lies in that, despite his injuries, Glass doesn’t die. The men are surrounded by natives who want to kill them, and it’s too far and he’s too wounded to be carried out to safety. Three men are left behind to watch over Glass until he expires. But one of them, the villainous Fitzgerald, kills Glass’s son and convinces the other man to flee to safety with him and lie about what happened.

But the word “revenant” means one who returns from the dead and that’s basically what Glass does. He drags himself out of the shallow grave Fitzgerald leaves him in and then crawls, walks, swims, or rides over hundreds of miles of snowy, treacherous, native-filled territory to exact his revenge.

On a technical level, the film is amazing. Some of the elaborate shots and sequences the director, Alejandro Inarritu, pulls off are really impressive. One shot filmed backwards from the mouth of a crashing waterfall and the chase sequence that ends with Hugh Glass and a horse galloping full-blast off a sheer cliff in particular are standouts. Notably, Inarritu shot the whole film using only natural light which is almost unheard of, and he supposedly filmed the whole movie in sequence, meaning they filmed in the order that the events in the film take place. In-sequence filming is notoriously expensive and might explain some of why the film’s budget went from 60 million dollars originally to 135 million dollars by the end.

The film’s technical polish doesn’t compensate for its emotional coldness. It’s hard to care about what happens to the characters really. Innarritu is a remarkably cerebral director and so his films usually elicit “Oh that’s interesting” rather than “I loved it so much.” Plus the film is spiritually bleak. Basically, it suggests we’re all just grubby, sick loners wandering through a hazy wasteland with nothing  more to do than to kill or be killed. There’s no hope, no salvation, not even any satisfaction when Glass finally has his showdown with Fitzgerald. It’s all just more of the same. 

 

DiCaprio does give a very good performance, but it’s mostly successful because of what he doesn’t do which is talk for most of the film. Glass’s throat is slashed and so he can’t speak. This frees Dicaprio from having to use his nasal, adolescent-sounding voice and it allows viewers to focus on his physical performance, which actually works better.

Innarritu makes films for grad students to write about, not really for audiences to enjoy. The film becomes an intellectual game of “spot the resurrection symbol” after a while. Glass emerges from a grave, multiple rivers, a sweat lodge, and even the carcass of a dead horse at one point. I get it, Alejandro. I respect it. I just don’t like it.

Discussing The Revenant Novel

This week, I talk with Dr. Laura Dull, chair of Delta College's Social Science division, about the campus read, The Revenant by Michael Punke, and a little about the movie tie-in with the book.

Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman is probably best known for his role as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter franchise. With that character, he basically played the ultimate double agent, a good guy turned bad guy, turned good guy who acted like a bad guy.  Though he looks and acts like a barely veiled villain through the whole series, in the end, we learn Snape is among the most vulnerable and human of all the characters in Harry Potter’s world. Love, loyalty, and loss drive him to do both horrible and heroic things, and it takes a unique actor to effectively play someone who is powerful and pathetic, someone we can both revile and revere. Rickman’s burdened face and that profoundly deep, resonant voice conveyed the weight of loss, and conflict that his character carried with him constantly.

Rickman died last week of pancreatic cancer at the age of 69, and it is a huge loss to both stage and screen. Rickman was a versatile and talented performer. While he may have been in a bad movie or two, he never turned in a bad performance. His characters were always grounded, believable, and compelling.

 

While younger viewers will recognize him from Harry Potter or as the voice of the Caterpillar in the Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, Rickman got his start in movies back in the 80s with the classic action film, Die Hard. Rickman’s smart, distainful, wily Hans Gruber is one of the greatest film villains of all time and was a huge part of why that film remains so fun and watchable. Every sequel in that franchise has tried desperately to recreate the fizzy, bantery hero/villain chemistry with little success. No one has been able to come up with an opponent for John Maclean as funny and menacing as Rickman’s creation. 

 He played several other notable bad guys. As great as Hans Gruber is, my personal favorite is Rickman’s performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Reportedly, Rickman kept turning down the role until the filmmakers agreed to let him have free reign in creating the character. I’m glad they agreed because is Sheriff is a maniacal, petulant tyrant who minces around his castle like a 1970s Mick Jagger. It is wonderfully, perfectly over the top and is easily the best part of the entire film.

My favorite Alan Rickman performance comes from Ang Lee’s 1995 Jane Austen adaptation, Sense and Sensibility. In the hard-luck tale of the Dashwood sisters, we meet Rickman’s Colonel Brandon, a retired military man with money, prestige, a secret in his past, and a torch for Marianne, the passionate, impetuous Dashwood sister. Of course, Marianne is in love with the handsome and more age appropriate John Willoughby and so Brandon spends the majority of the movie deeply in love and deeply reserved about it. Again, this is a testament to Rickman’s ability as an actor. He could convey soulfulness and longing with just an arched eyebrow or a momentary pause. Almost invariably, Rickman was the most interesting person on whatever screen he occupied. 

This weekend, you should watch Sense and Sensibility or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or Truly, Madly, Deeply, or Galaxy Quest or Sweeney Todd. Watch Rickman closely and you'll see why the film world is poorer for his absence. It is always sad when beloved actors pass away, but one of the beauties of film is that we get to keep enjoying their work even after they're gone.

This tribute was originally broadcast on Q90.1. For more information, go to www.deltabroadcasting.org.

Joy

 

Last Sunday night, Jennifer Lawrence won a Golden Globe for her performance in David O. Russell’s film Joy. In the film, Lawrence plays the title character, an overburdened nearly 40 year old divorced mother of two. She busily takes care of her children, her shut-in mother, her lounge singer ex-husband who lives in her basement, and her newly divorced father who also moves into her basement. Being swamped with a decaying house and unpaid bills, Joy never gets a chance to do anything for herself. Specifically, she never gets to develop any of the ideas she has for inventions. 

The film shows us that, as a young girl, Joy was full of ideas and ambition, but somewhere along the way, all of that got put on hold, so she lives her life harried, underwater, and unfulfilled.

When her father begins dating a wealthy woman with business experience, Joy simultaneously gets an idea and finds that she a potential investor. After red wine gets spilled on the expensive deck of the girlfriend’s sailboat and Joy has to mop up the broken glass and mess, she decides she wants to develop a self-wringing mop. The story of the movie is essentially how she designs and manufactures the Miracle Mop while running into money troubles, indifference, fraud, and betrayal at every step of the way. She eventually gets on QVC and sells tens of thousands of her mops but her troubles don’t end there. Her triumphant performance on live tv selling her product is not the climax you think it is and the movie goes on for another thirty or forty minutes after that happens. I hope it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that things turn out alright in the end and Joy is victorious.

Of course, the film isn’t just about a mop or selling stuff on TV. It’s about being who you really are and not letting the heaviness of everyday life weigh you down to the point that you stop pursuing what really matters to you. It is, without question, the most entertaining, well made movie about a QVC product you will ever see.

Jennifer Lawrence was rightly recognized at the Golden Globes because at 25 she manages to believably convey the discouragement, feistiness, devotion, and conflict of a weary but hopeful 40 year old woman. She’s a very organic performer and even though she never really looks old enough to play her character, you buy it.

While Lawrence’s performance is truly wonderful, the film itself is far from perfect. It was directed by David O. Russell, who began his career with prickly, provocative, sometimes experimental films but has transformed himself into a mainstream, feel-good storyteller. His films used to make you squirm but now he just wants to make you cheer. Joy is in the same vein as The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook. It features the same loving but flawed and unsupportive family characters, the same blue collar setting, the same triumphant underdog story. Of course, lots of directors explore the same territory over and over again. Scorcese, Spielberg, Tarantino, and plenty of others make the same film over and over again. The question is, how well do they do it.

In the case of Joy, there are problems with the script. There are dangling loose ends, completely unused characters, and too-convenient coincidences throughout. You could blame these problems on the fact that Joy is supposedly based on a true story, but it’s so very loosely adapted from the actual true story, there’s no reason for there to be  plot holes or random characters. Russell had no interest in a literal biopic, so he can’t blame the film’s blank spots on the biography. 

Still, even with the nagging questions of the script, Lawrence's award winning performance is enough. It's real and powerful enough to carry the entire film. I left the theater knowing Joy was a flawed, underdeveloped movie, but not caring about those flaws and loving it anyway.


This review originally appeared on Q90.1. For more information, go to www.deltabroadcasting.org.