The Revenant: Iñárritu, DiCaprio

“Wilderness” is no longer a romantic word for environmentalists to enthuse over in their drawing rooms. It is the inferno that disdains civilization, and offers “beauty” as a torment to our hopes and vanity.

For anyone who spends much time in wilderness, it is neither of these overheated exaggerations.

Still haven't seen Birdman, and I wasn't sure if I could see a film called The Revenant, which is a shorter title than Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, but probably, maybe, better. If there's a Michael Hurley song, though, maybe.

Just as Iñárritu’s Birdman deconstructs performance, so The Revenant is tense with self-assessment.

I dread the film school essay that will cite this sentence

didn't realize & cant believe this cost $135 mil to make

that's when they give u money to burn, after yr Oscar

He was halfway through shooting this when the Oscars happened, but there hadn't been much snow yet :-(.

“Wilderness” is no longer a romantic word for environmentalists to enthuse over in their drawing rooms. It is the inferno that disdains civilization, and offers “beauty” as a torment to our hopes and vanity.

It's weird that they'd quote Herzog and not cite their source.

For the first hour I was immensely enjoying this, some great cinematography by Lubezki for sure. I am not a fan of Inarritu, but thought I'd give this one a try. For the last hour and a half it is a typical load of Inarritu balls - just overdone yawnsome bombastic bollocks.

I don't get how extended scenes of strained facial expressions make a movie. Yet here you go!

https://41.media.tumblr.com/1e14e54c66adbd981a4f01b7d232d707/tumblr_mi09cxzrHJ1r0btqdo1_500.jpg

Got through to the end, enjoyed thoroughly. the nature alone is worth viewing.

I enjoyed it a lot, but didn't know that much about it - I only saw it as a cheap mystery movie, we were convinced it was going to be Spotlight.

You really feel like you're in Leonardo's bronchial passages, for all the NATURE it's very close in, one neat gimmick with the camera lens in particular. My friend claimed that the lack of space disqualified it as a western.

I made me want to rewatch Ride with the Devil.

You can definitely see a lot of money on film - but some of the cost is they outlasted Canada's snow and moved it to Argentina to finish?

Also regarding the Tom Hardy punching (and general Herzogianism) - apparently Hardy didn't like some of the realism the Iñárritu wanted, so the director let Hardy choke him out - someone took a photo, and that is the cast t-shirt.

iirc The weather in Argentina was also terrible and delayed shooting.

I really despised the trailer - lol @ natural lighting/well shot etc. Pure hammy technocratic nonsense. Lets burn a pile of money instead.

Friend wants to see this so I'll go on about how terrible this is afterwards on here too.

I generally dislike Iñarritu but I thought this was hallucinatory and/or intense.

fisheye lens very much in use

Reading in American Cinematographer magazine how some of their lenses warped due to extreme conditions and some of the resulting shots were kept in because of their unique look. But fisheye wasn't intentional it seems.

Nice Jodorowsky "Holy Mountain" homage early in the film, too.

"lol @ natural lighting/well shot etc. Pure hammy technocratic nonsense. Lets burn a pile of money instead."

yeah how dare anyone admire the technical and aesthetic elements of a film, wtf kind of post is this

apparently xyz just wants people in a room talking, single static cam

I found the 'everything is very clear and possibly something is happening that Leo's face can't see' scenes much more acid-etched than the 'and now, a hallucinatory passage' ones.

i suspect this is thread-relevant

@NickPinkerton Jan 4
Proposed addition to Sarris's The American Cinema categories, to meet the new demands of the 21st century: Messianic Mediocrity.

https://twitter.com/electrolemon/status/684863663010787330

looks pretty but overdramatised story

go for the lulz stay for the cinematography

xp oh my god

surprisingly big 1030 am crowd for this when i just went, its a bit of an arduous watch for an arduous story. does look often gorgeous. leo is always good and hes good here. idk hard for me to get too worked up abt this either +/-

like def is a theme abt as much as nature nearly kills leo, it also provides for him and like not only in obvious ways, a few times hed be dead just if the immed landscape was different idk that stuff was p cool; the revenge thru-line is m/l just to have a plot

I enjoyed this and theres some incredible scenes and breathtaking cinematography but a few Malick-isms cant help to hide the fairly slight story.

I don't think anyone's trying to hide it?

can't help but wish this could have been done by malick or herzog but it was still great

I really enjoyed this

its a great cinematic experience, overblown or not

xxp only if Herzog followed the bear instead.

a bear wd have to force me to see this

Seems like a good date idea

Bear rom com

"a few Malick-isms cant help to hide the fairly slight story."

on the whole you can same the same for Malick.

say the same *

I like the balance of Malick-isms in The Thin Red Line. I seem to enjoy it more every re-watch.

i dont want to get caught in the internet innaritu hate before i even see the film, but this does actually make me want to see it -

http://lwlies.com/articles/alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu-the-revenant-interview/

“I’m not a philosopher, I’m a filmmaker, but I think we have a long way to go before we fully understand the subconscious. The problem with film is that now people view it as an accurate representation of reality. I’m much less interested in reality in cinema than I am exploring the way we truly experience life, which is far away from reality. Reality is really just memories, little slices of sensation that we interpret as accurate versions of an event or moment in time. There’s a lot of things left to explore, and I’m just scratching the surface of the subconscious, of the spirit world. But unfortunately right now I think we’re going in the exact opposite direction.

“The Revenant was a way for me to express an extreme human experience through what I call ‘pure cinema’. It was a huge exercise for me to work out how I could tell this story with as few words as possible, in a very emotional and sensory way. When you strip out dialogue you do so in order to understand your subject – to understand what he’s thinking and feeling and trying to do – and by doing that you’re left with the image, literally to moving images and sounds. You have to go deep to really get to what this guy is about. For me, it was an exercise in molecular storytelling.”

People have been thinking this sorta stuff since 1905. Update your thoughts plz.

sure, but theres some sort of weird backlash between a certain online contingent who think they are just far smarter than this film (which may well be true), and well, everyone else, who might actually be pleased to see a big major release that isnt about superheroes (exaggerated binary there, i know). i mean, i find the self serious pompsity of his films sort of irritating/insufferable, but id prob still rather watch this than knight of cups (if were talking modern malick vs fake malick). also, although i havent truly liked anything he has done since 21 grams (and even then not as much as amores perros), i will probably still check out his films because of those early ones.

Its a rubbish binary. That 'everyone else' doesn't scan - there are big release films that aren't about superheroes.

rubbish, ok, but a popular, enduring binary. i know its bogus, but it also holds true in a sense, that there will always be smaller (hollywood - cos thats what people mean when they have these discussions, they dont care about arthouse releases) movies being made and released, they just dont make quite as much as the more typical modern tentpolers. here are the top ten grossers in the uk of last year -

1 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
2 Spectre
3 Jurassic World
4 Avengers: Age of Ultron
5 Minions
6 Furious 7
7 Inside Out
8 Fifty Shades of Grey
9 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

apart from minions and inside out and 50 shades, all the rest are franchises. and unless you count 50 shades, none of them are 'serious' or 'adult' dramas. the top ten for 1985 however is somewhat more diverse -

1 Back to the Future
2 Rambo: First Blood Part II
3 Rocky IV
4 The Color Purple
5 Out of Africa
6 Cocoon
7 The Jewel of the Nile
8 Witness
9 The Goonies
10 Spies Like Us

TBH looking at the top ten of any year is never going to really throw up much that isnt a 'big' movie (looking outside the top ten to 11-30 is a better reflection).

ANYWAY, my point is that i doubt this can be as bad as the smarter-than-thou cinephiles want it to be, nor is it likely to be as good as the oscars seem to believe it is. but it is still likely to be better than queen of the desert, herzogs last hollywood movie (im seeing comparisons to werner for this too, cos yknow, its about a man conquering the wild and battling against nature etc etc). make of that what you will.

Not a criticism, but I'm not sure how 50 shades and Minions aren't franchises?

i forgot about minions being a spin off from despicable me. obv 50 shades IS part of a franchise, and an adaptation of a work that is already successful, but i didnt include it as being a franchise as its the start of a new one, rather than just the latest sequel to one already existing. but point taken.

Don't agree with the notion => not as many franchises in the 80s => more diverse.

Not even sure as to the point of the lists. Its gone off this tangent of populist arthouse guy has not v good ideas to...idk what. None of the 80s films were exploring anything too 'out there' (unless you start throwing irony about).

Is the Revenant really going to sell many tkts

Its a rubbish binary. That 'everyone else' doesn't scan - there are big release films that aren't about superheroes.

when i saw hateful 8, nearly every trailer was a franchise superhero movie. i mean "it is not a superhero movie" is hardly praise, but even accepting blockbusters and what they do, there is a truly pathetic level of creativity or daring involved.

and like one superhero per movie is no longer enough, they have to cram a few more in to sate people.

im saying there are two schools of thinking about him/this film, and both seem to inform the press/awards buzz it has gotten so far. im just saying, there is a bit of context to both. its not like innaritu isnt at least TRYING to do something braver than the main of what constitutes big hollywood moviemaking today. not saying he pulls it off, or that he isnt a humourless, pretentious, stiff (this is what bugged me the most about birdman beneath its guise of crazy anything-can-happen-ness) bore, but yknow, he at least has some lofty ideals in mind, regardless of what the results are. i think hes just someone who could 'relax' a little more in his work. he tries too hard to be great all the time.

I mean, significantly better in a likely role is kind of stacking the deck anyway, this was a likely winner because it's a very much the sort of huffing puffing performance of adversity that the academy tends to award - it's gotten a bit better from the 90s run of Silence of the Lambs / Scent of a Woman / Forrest Gump / Leaving Last Vegas / Shine (though there was definitely a bit of "Beat that!" in Eddie Redmayne's win as Stephen Hawking last year), but there's still a sense of "I want a Oscar - what should be wrong with me?"

Has a director ever won two years in a row before?

Mankiewicz and Ford.

Leo's acting was good when he was rolling around in agony, unable to talk.

Hardy was better in the same movie.

Leo at least had an excuse for his unintelligible mumbling.

it would be cool if there was a video game of this movie.

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/issue/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/dysentery.jpeg

Seeing this was a much better way to spend 2.5 hrs than any awards show.

Struggling to think of a lower bar tbh

There are a lot of ILM threads that will meet you halfway (and a lot of ILE threads in fairness, and they're less likely to have decent music)

Slightly higher bar: I liked it.
Next rung up: it was worth the $9.50 I paid to see it.
Beyond that, I'm not qualified to say.

I thought it was a great movie.

Yeah, I had no problem with it, it was a great Movie. That is, big screen, spectacle, well-made, had a vision. It just didn't have anything to say, imo, which left it kind of shallow/hollow.

I thought it implied a lot about white settlement in native land

Yeah, that was there, but I didn't get anything deeper from it. That's not what the movie was "about" really, was it? it was about dogged revenge, or toughness or something vague and violent. Like I may have noted, like poor-man's Malick, with the craft and vision but minus the courage of ambiguity/mystery/natural magic or whatever.

Like a malick, u mean

http://i.imgur.com/xeCbQws.jpg

when is he playing Welles

lol gr80 that pic...

leo was good in this and i figured he'd get the oscar. anyway mostly i'm just glad eddie redmayne didn't win. also, Josh in Chicago otm

I thought it implied a lot about white settlement in native land

― akm, Monday, February 29, 2016 11:54 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that's in the film, but then there's also the Arikara leader who speaks only in exposition, where like 70% of his lines are "Maybe they have Powaqa" or "If we go this way, we might find Powaqa" like his men (or the audience) are too stupid to remember their goal.

I thought the most perplexing stuff was why this hyper-realistic movie of people in the real world doing real historically stuff real-y tossed in those bits of magical realism, of floating wives and ghost kids. Worked in "Tree of Life," but not here.

Kind of happy this didn't win last night. I enjoyed parts of it I guess, but overall it was like if Malick, Tarantino, and Herzog collaborated on a film, but decided to remove any of the mystery, wit, or weirdness of their own work.

otm. Best director I can see, best picture nah.

Rescreening this film after reading the source novel... if you didn't like the movie than do yourself a favor and avoid the book.