The Revenant, a review by a young man.
The film was finally out. Eager to see it, I felt I owed the greatest Mexican filmmaker of our time the favor -although I was the one being favored- of seeing it as soon as possible; after all, he made, in my humble opinion, 2014’s best film: Birdman. Now, it was for me a shock to see such a huge leap from his previous work to Birdman, and the fact that Michael Keaton was the perfect actor for this role -it’s mostly his life and his rise to great acting skills, right?- made it all the way better. So, naturally, I was expecting it with high hopes.
The Revenant is a great tribute to adventure films, specifically westerns. Crude, realistic and sincere, it didn’t need much to draw viewers in. The first sequence, the memoirs of Glass -the protagonist, an American who lived among the tribe known as the Pawnees- , opened likewise many films of its genre: a massacre of indians, huts burning, children crying and hiding, but nonetheless the shots were beautifully achieved. You could hear the words of Glass in Pawnee, trying to ease his son’s fears and his pain. Along with images of great landscapes, I started to fell the peace that gradually tried to cover Hawk -the half bred son of Glass-.
Then the crudeness continued. The Arikara were lurking around a camp of Americans who went up north to hunt and gather pelts, and by the sound of gunshot near the camp -Glass, Hawk and a boy named Jim were still hunting early in the morning- they started to position themselves to prepare for an incoming attack towards the Americans. The Arikara prelude, not shown in the film, was implied by the camp’s fear of the Rees -thus were referred as-, indicating that they were constantly attacking American brigades and stealing their stuff, and by hearing Glass’s gunshot they knew that the Rees would definitely come to pillage. The confrontation and the tense atmosphere of such upheavals echoed throughout the whole film, wrapping up the danger of living in those times and places, and the hatred that the native Americans felt towards their invaders.
The story continues with the American troops getting slaughtered by the Rees, with around ten suvivors. Glass’s job was to take the company back to their establishment and to secure the pelts gathered. By the earlier event, they were forced to hide the pelts and go back to the base to await for more troops who’d retaliate easily against the Indians. To speed up this quasi-review, let’s just say that Glass gets mauled by a bear, leaving him on the verge of death. The company needs to take a decision of whether to leave him behind or stay and wait to see if he can recover from it. Fitzgerald, a member of the troop, suggests going back to base ASAP, arguing that Glass would never make it back, and kill him to end his suffering. The captain reluctantly tries to finish Glass’s life, but decides to pay volunteers for taking care of him until he recovers, for he only knows the optimum way back. Fitzgerald soon takes advantage of this and stays behind, offered his share and the shares of Hawk and Jim.
Without further spoilers, the film focuses on Glass’s struggle to survive and to take revenge. We then continue to see his efforts, hardships and cleverness, taking us deep inside the danger of it all. This is where the Western style entered in vigor. Like in many other films, the director centered his scenes on this suffering. Like in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, where Clint Eastwood is shown being tortured by Eli Walach -Tuco in the film-, forcing him to walk barefoot around the desert, begging for water, showing the effects of sunstroke and deformities of skin. That is when the film resonated, along with the civil war scene, for me. Both this film and the Revenant took a shot on this, to keep people scared and terrified of the cruelties that man is capable of, and how you’d end up if you were in this situation -and for the kids, may I dare say that the Good Dinosaur centers on this concept too-. The long scenes, perhaps boring at the beginning of the sequences, were the most important thing after realizing this simple idea. The suffering in Glass’s eyes and his constant souvenirs of his wife left me awestruck with compassion.
Bottom line is this: what makes the most out of this film are, considered by many, its gorgeous shots. For me, it was the crudeness and realistic approach -if you put aside, of course, the fact that the guy survived a bear mauling, for God’s sake!- of survival. It’s truly a journey to that era’s world’s end.
Keep them coming, Iñarritu!
