Real life frontiersman Hugh Glass gained fame for being attacked by a grizzly and living to tell about it. KPBS arts reporter Beth Accomando says that legendary tale provides the starting point for the film The Revenant. Leonardo Di Caprio wants an Oscar so bad he’s willing to sleep in an animal carcass, eat raw bison liver, and get mauled by a bear. CLIP SFX attack. OK the grizzly attack is just CGI. But in some ways that computer generated bear is more real than DiCaprio’s performance even though the actor claims his experience was genuinely grueling. And that’s the problem with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film The Revenant. It comes across as a star turn for a Hollywood golden boy who thinks getting dirty and subjecting himself to freezing temperatures is acting with a capital A. But DiCaprio’s performance is the least interesting thing in the film. DiCaprio plays mountain man Hugh Glass who’s attacked by a grizzly, abandoned by his colleagues, and survives not just to tell about it but also to get even with those who left him to die. Iñárritu grafts a revenge tale onto a man versus nature survivalist story. It’s gorgeously shot and relentlessly violent but our attention keeps drifting to the periphery of the narrative, most notably to Tom Hardy’s ruthlessly pragmatic trapper. CLIP Glass it would be better if you would take that last breath now. Hardy does more with less to rivet us to the screen than DiCaprio does chewing up the scenery and the livestock. The Revenant is a case of the parts being better than the whole, especially the parts without DiCaprio. Beth Accomando, KPBS News.
Real life frontiersman Hugh Glass gained fame for being attacked by a grizzly and living to tell about it. That legendary tale provides the starting point for the film “The Revenant” (opening Jan. 8 in select theaters).
Leonardo DiCaprio wants an Oscar so bad he’s willing to sleep in an animal carcass, eat raw bison liver and get mauled by a bear.
OK, the grizzly attack is just CGI. But in some ways that computer generated bear is more real than DiCaprio’s performance, even though the actor claims his experience playing mountain man Hugh Glass was almost as grueling as the real thing. And that’s the problem with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film “The Revenant.” It feels like a star turn for a Hollywood golden boy who thinks getting dirty and subjecting himself to freezing temperatures is acting with a capital A. But DiCaprio’s performance is the least interesting thing in the film.
DiCaprio plays mountain man Hugh Glass, who’s attacked by a grizzly, abandoned by his colleagues and survives not just to tell about it but also to seek vengeance on those who left him to die. Iñárritu grafts this revenge tale onto a man versus nature survivalist story. There are also elements of “Gladiator” (Glass’ visions of his dead wife), “Fitzcarraldo” (in Glass’ obsession and determination) and “The New World” (in the visual style carried over by Terence Malick’s cinematographer and production designer).
The film cuts between multiple storylines. It shows Glass on his journey of revenge; Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and Bridger (Will Poulter), the men he’s pursuing; the company man who left Glass in the care of Fitzgerald and Bridger; a group of Native Americans looking for one of their women who was stolen by the French; and the French trappers. A lot of threads but precisely the kind of sprawling narrative Iñárritu gained his fame with. But the problem is that the threads are not equally weighted and not as well woven together as he’s done in the past.
One change to the real life of Glass that Iñárritu and co-writer Mark L. Smith make is to give Glass a mixed race son and to involve him in the revenge story. Aside from this not being true (although truth in a movie biography is not something to be expected), it seems added only to make Glass more sympathetic and to present him as more politically correct. He speaks some of the Native American tribal languages and (as in “Dances With Wolves”) provides a white man who can be our window to the suffering of the indigenous people. The son is merely a prop in the story and not developed as a character that enhances the story.
The film is gorgeously shot by Emmanuel Lubezki and is relentlessly violent (in a particularly effective manner). Nature watches in gorgeous indifference as the human characters suffer. But the problem is our attention keeps drifting to the periphery of the narrative, most notably to Tom Hardy’s ruthlessly pragmatic trapper Fitzgerald.
Hardy does more with less to rivet us to the screen than DiCaprio does chewing up the scenery and the livestock. While DiCaprio screams and thrashes about, Hardy reduces his movements and lowers his voice to create a fascinating character. He’s a man who has his survival as his only real agenda item. Poulter’s Bridger is also more interesting than DiCaprio’s Glass.
DiCaprio’s performance — as with Eddie Redmayne’s work in “The Theory of Everything” and “The Danish Girl” — places too much emphasis on the external trappings of his character and fails to create an inner life. Some actors — like Robert DeNiro gaining excessive weight for “Raging Bull” — manage to focus on the external elements as a means to getting to that inner life. But DiCaprio is only playing the surface. And when revenge comes to a climax at the end, it falls flat because it requires more than just the violent confrontation, it requires an emotional change and resolution that DiCaprio cannot deliver. I think Iñárritu has something more on his mind than revenge, but the potential complexity of his ending is lost in DiCaprio’s hands.
“The Revenant” (rated R for strong frontier combat and violence, including gory images, a sexual assault, language and brief nudity) is a case of the parts being better than the whole, especially the parts without DiCaprio.
