Quote:
Originally Posted by jw007
I saw the film on opening night last night too at an 8pm showing here... [Show spoiler] The theater was packed to the rafters and pretty much was sold out! My friend Marc and I managed to get there 15 min. early and found 2 great seats in the 2nd row on the stadium seats on the left. This film was an intense experience! Like many people have already said, some of the flashback scenes and survival sequences might have been over the top, but personally I thought the bear attack scene was one of the most realistic animal attack scenes I've ever seen in film (in terms of CGI).
My friend called it "Jeremiah Johnson vers. 2.0" (or even 3.0 for that matter). I thought of the more recent movie The Grey, especially when Liam Neeson's character jumps off a cliff and lands on pine trees to "cushion" his fall (an instance that happens in this film too). In The Revenant, Leo DeCaprio was pretty much Jeremiah Johnson on steroids in terms of surviving everything he went through. Obviously, Tom Hardy's character was outrageous and as bad as fur traders come. I actually thought often of Terrence Malick in those flashback/dream sequences. I also thought of Costner's Dances with Wolves as well, with the Native American element and ties to a woman the main character had. I enjoyed the artistic backstory on Hugh Glass (DeCaprio) too, and appreciated the fact that this was based on a true story.
The real winner is the Cinematography though. Emmanuel Lubezki has often been superlative in his work with Innaritu, but if he doesn't win an Oscar for his work in this movie, it would be a tragedy of immense proportions. Some of these scenes in the film, from the opening "water forest" landscape to many others in terms of lighting and scenery, were outstanding. It's no "wonder" (no pun intended) that Lubezki has always been Terrence Malick's Director of Photography as well (since 2005's The New World). I was reminded of some scenes in The New World as well while watching The Revenant, in addition to the 1991 Beresford movie Black Robe, which is, in terms of sheer Production Design and Cinematography, underwhelming, compared to The Revenant. The score by Ryuichi Sakamoto (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence) was remarkable also, adding a minimalist and sweeping tone to the film, and never being invasive or overpowering. I loved the use of synthesizers for many of the film's scenes.
As a survival story, I thought this film was as good as it gets. However, the third act of predictable revenge is where it fell. It became a bit too obvious about how this story was going to end, and though I was expecting all of this frontier violence and gore, it was incredibly graphic and I sometimes found myself looking away from the screen for a few moments. But man, what a movie! I don't think DeCaprio's character of Hugh Glass is well-rounded enough or shows his character with enough depth, for DeCaprio to win an Oscar for Best Actor, but he surely deserves a nomination, which he most likely will receive. Mr. Glass was simply unbreakable! |
Finally catched this as it was just released here, and almost agree with everything you wrote.
The movie was great especially the first 2 acts, score was great, cinematography was great, bear scene was awesome, it reminded me of
Grizzly Man even though there is no graphic violence there I picture that crucial moment had to be something as hard to watch as this.
I basically have the same problems with the third act, I think some parts near the end seem specifically constructed to extend the action scenes as opposed to the beginning where it all flows more naturally.
Also agree with most that the flashbacks are not done gracefully in my opinion, I think it shows that just having a great cinematographer is not enough, some of them felt forcing the film to be more artsy but I just didn't think they work that well, maybe because the thematic in the end is pretty simple, it is a survival movie.
While I liked the cinematography and some of the shots reminded me to
The New World and
The Tree of Life, I think in a lot of parts the shots were much more traditional in style, I couldn't stop thinking about
Marketa Lazarova in several parts, and thought that if the film dared to really push a more artistic approach like that, it could have been much better, and sorry but as great as Chivo is, I still prefer that black and white cinematography of Marketa.
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