![The Revenant – Ain’t No Man Righteous, No Not One [Review]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/the-revenant02.jpg)
Leonardo Di Caprio won the SAG Award this past weekend for Best Actor in The Revenant. He’s tipped to march all the way to gold at the Oscars later this month. This weekend, the Directors Guild will hand out its prizes. The Revenant led the way when the Oscar nominations were announced with 12 including Best Picture, Best Costume Design, Best Actor, Team Innaritu/Lubezcki were nominated in their respective categories for Best Director and Best Cinematographer.
Catch up with conversations I’ve had with some of the nominees from The Revenant, and enjoy re-visiting Sasha’s review of the film
Sasha reviews The Revenant
Best Cinematography – Emmanuel Lubezki
Interview: Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki talks shooting The Revenant and Bear Attacks
Best Film Editing – Stephen Mirrione
Best Costume Design – Jacqueline West
Interview: Jacqueline West Talks Costume Design on The Revenant
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The Revenant didn’t pack the emotional weight I expected. I thought the movie missed the chance to go deeper into the Native experience. It all got condensed into the white male hero fantasy (I’m assuming this is because Inarritu didn’t deviate from the book). It was beautiful to look at for a few hours. For me Hardy had the better acting performance over DiCaprio. The movie itself I just don’t think I’ll remember much in years to come. Maybe that is why it will win BP.
The Revenant is a great film and Inarritu’s masterpiece. Would easily have been in my top 3 last year (and is a far more inspired and impressive film than Birdman). But this year it’s my #7. Though it’s his best, like all of Inarritu’s films, it does feel a little self-consciously artsy for me and not entirely sure of itself at its center. Still, the movie works and is a marvel to look at. Would be a deserving Best Picture/Director winner for a worse year. But I’m still a little sour about Birdman. And The Big Short is the best picture of this year.
^
golly, I like this comment.
– Myan Adars
Ryan, thanks for this post. I’ll have to check out the reconstructed ”Heaven’s Gate” …
no, really, there’s not. It’s your usual revenge tale, and the villain ultimately regretting his actions (the only original aspect)
Mad Max.
Is a FILM, too much to ask for? This is as much of a FILM, as any Michael Bay film. Over-the-top without any other purpouse than showing off. A good comparison is, Mad Max Fury Road, in which Miller plays with conventions, ex-machina, and juggles with themes and visual allegories. The Revenant is a film that could have been less than one hour long, when you really think about it. The group is attacked, a bear attacks Leo, 2 are taking care of him, decide to leave him to die, kill son. Leo survives by pure luck, begins the revenge. Revenge is achieved. No depth, nothing to chew on. Oh yes, the bear is amazing, as some of the continuous shots and scenarios. Birdman was more or less the same, but also 21 Grams or Babel. Everything goes as dark as possible, then “artistic” resolution, but nothing to really chew on, rather than darkness or some insanity. It’s like a discount David Lynch movie. And yes, he’s a master of visual choreography with the long takes. But so is de Palma, and he’s still waiting for one single nom, despite having made at least 5 better films than any Iñarritu’s. What is more, I liked “The Bonfire of Vanities” opening long take, way better than any of “The Revenant”‘s or “Birdman”‘s.
you need to see more movies. You really need to see more Iñarritu movies. They are just iterations of the same trick. He just can’t get a grip of what restraint is. Spotlight and The Big Short may be boring to you, but they excel at some aspects Iñarritu is unable to, no matter how showy his style is.
Heaven’s Gate is an insanely beautiful masterpiece. When it was released, though, newspaper stories about its cost overruns overshadowed any objective appraisal of the movie itself.
The no-nothing Manhattan insurance executives at Transamerica Corp (who bought and ruined United Artists) panicked and butchered Heaven’s Gate.
It screened for one single week in the form Cimino had intended. Transamerica then carved it down from 219 minutes to 149 minutes. — that’s fully 1/3 of the movie that they chopped out. It wrecked the narrative. The movie ceased to have context and no longer made sense.
yes, it cost $40 million, but that’s equivalent to $120 million in today’s money. A huge amount, sure. but it was 4 hours long and it was a work of crazy genius. Studios routinely spend $150 million to $200 million on all sorts of piles of shit every year these days.
Heaven’s Gate gets blamed for destroying United Artists, but that’s false on so many levels. Transamerica Corp made a lot of terrible business decisions.
(by the way, even before Heaven’s Gate was released, all the top movie talent at United Artists left the company in protest over the incompetence of Transamerica execs. They left to form a new studio. They called it Orion. And Orion immediately proceeded to win Best Picture 3 years in a row.)
It would be 2012 before Heaven’s Gate would be available to the general public again in its proper form. A reconstructed 216-minute version was screened at the Venice Film Festival and then Criterion acquired it for Blu-ray.
If you want to see one of the finest documentaries about the ’70s and ’80s movie industry ever made — buy or rent “Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession” — about 45 minutes or more of that doc is devoted to Heaven’s Gate.
A thorough (though biased) book by Steven Bach called “Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven’s Gate” is also pretty good.
Heaven’s Gate is one of my favorite movies of all time. Top 20 of all-time, for me.
Comparing The Revenant to Heaven’s Gate is appropriate in a lot of circumstantial ways. but if The Revenant can grow in stature over the next couple of decades like Heaven’s Gate has done, then it will have proven itself one of the greatest personal filmmaking obsessions in cinema history.
Right now, a month after its release, I think it’s too soon to know if it deserves to be compared to Heaven’s Gate on an artistic level.
I’m sure a lot of you guys have seen it, and hopefully love it.
Anyone who hasn’t seen it, anyone who’s curious, who needs another reason to check it out: it was shot by Vilmos Zsigmond, one of the dozen greatest cinematographers in film history. He passed away a month ago.
Speaking of ”The Deer Hunter,” I’m reminded of Michael Cimino, who also made an epic, long Western set in the 1800s, called ”Heaven’s Gate.” From the early reports of ”The Revenant” running over schedule and over budget, it’s remarkable that ”The Revenant” turned out as great as it is. In hands other than Inarritu’s, it could’ve been another ”Heaven’s Gate.” Principal shooting started October 2014 and with the delays due to weather, it only finished in August. The studio kept insisting it had to be ready for a December release. Luckily, Inarritu & Co. just made it under the wire, with their final edit in mid-November. Whew!
I have to say, having seen The Big Short and Spotlight, The Revenant is the most soulful choice. This epic deserves the gold along with the majority of its nominations especially Best Actor and Cinematography. Its reminiscent to The Deer Hunter in terms of a long ass epic that should over throw anything in its way just for the sake of how much of a classic this will be regarded as. I was in awe the entire film. Lubezski is a genius.
I’ll never understand why so many on AD shit on this movie all the time. It’s quite simply one of the best films of this decade. Maybe it’s just an Inarittu thing? I remember this site doing the same thing to Birdman last year. Floplight and The Big Shart are such boring choices. C’mon Academy, give it the masterpiece! Not 2 movies that will be forgotten in a year.
The Tree of Life is 10 times the movie The Revenant is.
“You didn’t get it” is such a cheap shot at people with differing opinions. Admittedly, I’m a Revenant detractor. It’s an emotionally hollow slog through incredibly familiar thematic territory. Propped up by lame attempts at spirituality and featuring borderline offensive depictions of indigenous peoples, this is a bloated mess of a B-movie that pretends to be art. Seeing comparisons to The Tree of Life or All Is Lost drive me insane since those are both towering achievements. The Revenant is simply the more digestible version of better movies that we’ve seen within the past couple years. It’s pulp fiction rendered on an epic scale, and neither DiCaprio’s performance nor Inarritu’s typically monotone direction are well-executed, let alone award-worthy.
It’s a shame Inarritu was awarded for his worst film to date (Birdman). But I think he will win again this year, this time deserving the gold.
And even that’s too inclusive… 🙂 (It’s a two-way race, and has been every since the SAG nominations.)
agree, i disliked birdman was not rooting for it at all, didnt care for inarritu either (feel bad about that because i reealize he directed one of my fav movies amores perros but hey you don’t have to like every effort by a director ) but this year gotta give him his due he birthed a great and visceral movie experience
A Masterclass in Filmmaking!
Thanks for this.
The best film of the year.
What a shame Inarritu was awarded for Birdman and will probably miss out on best picture for his true masterpiece.
This is so reminiscent of the pounding taken by The Tree of Life (and by those of us who loved the experience of the film).
Hard to read comments like “over the top” drama when you know the person making them has never spent a night alone in the woods, let alone been attacked by a bear or even gone without supper.
We love to dismiss as boring those primal connections we don’t understand and we’ve lost the ability to just stop talking and instead look, listen, smell, and feel – not for enjoyment, but to stay alive. There’s a whole glorious world out there that will take you down if you don’t learn to experience it and respect it. Innaritu and co. did a good job capturing that.
The Revenant was a complete 180 from the vacuous and narcissistic Birdman. I never expected such an effort from Innaritu.
Good film, Black Robe. There’s a novel by a First Nations author I’m waiting for somebody to option – The Orenda by Joseph Boyden. Highly, highly recommended.
This seems like the type of film I *should* love – Terrence Malick is one of my favorite directors, my favorite movie of the last two decades is “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” etc But for whatever reason it just didn’t captivate me much. Two very good performances, some very good cinematography and an effective score, but apparently I missed whatever the soul of this movie is.
Thanks for giving us a chance to revisit Sasha’s beautiful rave review of ”The Revenant” and Jazz Tangcay’s insightful interviews. Most of these originally ran before the movie opened wide, so it’s fascinating to compare notes and get the background nitty-gritty after seeing it. I’m so happy that this ”epic, arthouse Western” is overperforming at the Oscars with 12 nominations (when pundits expected 8-9). And it’s overperforming at the box office: almost $140 million domestically, in only its 4th week of wide release (and $142 million overseas).
What’s with the obsession with Inarritu and his scarf? I’ve seen plenty of photos of him without one. He’s not even the only director to wear one. Recently, AwardsDaily ran a photo of Adam McKay with a scarf.
Very true. It does depend on what you want in a film, or in this particular type of film.
Not easy to like but cinematic as hell. Depends on what you want in a film, I guess. A real immersive experience with a simple story overlying deeper themes, which may challenge your time management as well as your thought processes a bit. Or, a film with everything more or less spelled out and over in an easy 90 minutes. In today’s world the latter seems to rule.
Showy but boring. Technically good, great performances, ultimately I film I disliked all-together, as one-trick-phony Iñarritu, plays again, with over-the-top drama full of over-the-top situations, just to show off how great his actors are, and how amazing are, his directing skills.
Comparing “The Revenant” to “Spotlight”, “Mad Max: Fury Road”, “Room”, “The Martian” and “The Big Short” is actually quite painful. In the other films, story rules, in The Revenant, is just a mere excuse.
It’s quite stunning. I don’t get the negative reviews.
Is this movie perfect? No. I had a few issues with it. Having said that, plenty of the top contenders are flawed/could have been slightly better. IMO.
The Revenant is a challenging, ambitious, admirable film that is more than deserving of Best Picture.
I love the treatment that the Native Americans get in the story.
The film-making on display is wonderful.
The reviews are very good (has it’s share of divisive reactions, too).
And the box office is crazy good.
People are intrigued by The Revenant, talking about it and, that’s something we always want in Best Pictures.
Spotlight and The Big Short are stellar films. But for me, if it’s not Mad Max: Fury Road (My personal fave), then The Revenant is right up there as the most deserving this year.
No matter what, I’m just glad there’s no stinker in this group of 8.
I would be very surprised if it does win, but I wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest if it did. It’s probably the film that will endure the longest from the group that is nominated, with the possible exception of Mad Max, an exceptional actioner with remarkable feminine and humane themes underlying. Both these films dealt with larger themes than The Big Short or Spotlight, although I loved both of them as well.
Read the above. It’s not an easy film. Simplicity rules the surface and underneath there are more serious and compelling themes if you want to go there. There are always people who won’t, though. That’s fine. It is what it is.
I will say it again. Its time for Big Epic film Titanic-like to win BP! GO Relevant!
Not an easy film to digest and different strokes for different folks. It will be more appreciated in the future I think. For now it is a bit divisive and unresolved.
Yes, absolutely. The way it portrayed the Native Americans was especially great. Black Robe came out about the time that Dances with Wolves came out. I thought the former was far superior in its portrayal of the indigenous peoples whose lands were invaded and usurped by the European foreigners. The way it portrayed them as both curious yet distrusting, for good reason, as well as more generous in some ways and violent in others, they came across as much more complex, human and understandable, given the environment that they were so much a part of. Also the way that the priests were portrayed made them only slightly sympathetic, but really quite poisonous for the tribes who would eventually be nearly exterminated either by diseases brought by them or by violent conflict. If you ask me which was the greater film, I would have to say Black Robe, unequivocally. I can watch Black Robe over and over and still appreciate it’s brilliance. Not so with the other film. Dances with Wolves was the “care bear” version of the native americans, saved by the heroic white man, even though it sought to present a more generous and sympathetic portrayal of them.
Saw it 1.5 weeks ago and still fresh in my mind. Breathtakingly beautiful. Scenes after scenes to marvel and remember. The opening attack scene, the bear scene, the escape/horse scene, the bison lever scene, the climax fight scene (so brutal and looked so damn real), the last Leonardo face close-up scene…
Oscars won’t be all white next year – check out the trailer for Miles Ahead.
Maybe is not the best movie of the year (Inside Out is) but is surely way better than Spotlight and Big Short (in my opinion the worst (but still good) movie of all 8 nominees).
I think not only me but many people are tired of these polticial right films winning oscar (Argo, 12 years, and now Spotlight, TBS)
Its time for BIG epic film to win BP!!!!!
Inarritu can do what he wants I guess, but dude, lose that scarf for the love of all that is holy.
Hmmm FiveThirtyEight doesn’t see the Revenant in Best Picture contention anymore: “The best picture race is now a three-picture contest. “The Big Short” won the Eddie for comedy, “Mad Max: Fury Road” won the Eddie for best drama and “Spotlight” won the coveted Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding cast.”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-you-fake-the-academy-to-predict-the-oscars/
TR is a typical Inarritu film, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Sasha’s description of The Revenant, “an epic, visceral cinematic ride” reminds me of another spectacular and brilliant film set in the incredible North American wilderness during frontier times – Bruce Bereford’s 1991 epic, Black Robe.
This movie is still on my mind three weeks after viewing.That opening scene was just astonishing. ..I would never fathom how people can dislike this film.Anyway there are in the minority because the box office speaks for itself.The cinematography was just amazing.The actors from Leo to Will were on their A game. I am sure I will be the only who won’t be surprised if TR wins best picture.
I saw The Revenant yesterday and thought it was a waste of time, I didn’t like it. I thought Leonardo Dicaprio was a lot better in the Wolf of Wall Street.
Agreed…..this film felt like a great waste of talent and expertise.