Wednesday Review - The Revenant

 

I think these past two weeks have shown me just how much expectations affect our enjoyment of movies. While watching The Revenant I was startled to realize just how much more I enjoyed The Forest a week earlier. The difference in expectations should be fairly obvious. The Forest was a 90-minute January horror film, that needed only provide me with a few good scares to satisfy me. The Revenant is a 150-minute DiCaprio epic, widely expected to finally secure an Oscar for its star. The problem with the film, however, is not remotely DiCaprio. He gives an awesome performance.

Anyone who reads Cracked.com already knows that very little of this story actually resembles what happened to the real Hugh Glass. The man really was attacked by a bear while on a trapping expedition, and abandoned for dead by his companions. However, the film adds in a dead wife, a murdered son, a kidnapped Native American princess, and her tribe searching for her and killing random white people under the assumption they had something to do with her disappearance.

Of these subplots, the only one that actually improves the story is the murdered son (who is half Native American so the film can squeeze in scenes of the US Army murdering Glass' fictional wife). John Fitzgerald, the man who decided to abandon Glass, kills his son in front of him when Glass was too wounded to interfere, and convinced another companion to leave him in an effort to cover up the murder.

I suspect that the subplot about the Native Americans was added to justify their aggression, and avoid accusations of racism. However, I think most people in 2016 know the general causes of the Plains Wars, and “they're trapping on our land!” probably would have worked to give us the opening raid that sets the plot in motion. If we're following a man who's been mauled by a bear, we don't need to add action scenes for him to survive any more than we needs scenes of him trying to diffuse a bomb.

On top of all of this, we get periodic dream sequences. What do these add? They tell us that Glass is sad that his wife and son are dead. That really seems to be it, because we as the audience couldn't figure out that Glass was unhappy about his son being murdered in front of him.

Why am I bringing all these up? If you've seen the movie you know that all the things don't really take up that much time. However, that's not the point. This film is primarily driven by the story of man dragging himself out of a grave, and back to civilization. The film should be about endurance for the audience, watching his pain, as much as for Glass. Every time they cut away from him, whether it's for a dream sequence, watching the Native Americans trade with the French, or just to see what Fitzgerald is up to, the movie is weakened, because the experience of Leo's performance is diluted.

As an aside, I also hated this movie's ending. Not to give away the details, I'll say that the movie attempts to have its cake and eat it to. The result is a climax that makes Glass out to be a massive hypocrite, and far less sympathetic.

Would I say I won't recommend this film? No, I'd say it's worth seeing. However, I would likewise say that it's not worthy of the praise it's currently receiving. Maybe wait for the DVD.