Why The Revenant is going to be one of the most influential movie for the future cinema?
In July 2015, people got to see the first look of The Revenant, the very first trailer. Till then everyone knew or had heard about it as the “Leonardo Di Caprio movie”. The trailer stimulated the viewers in a different way, they hadn’t seen anything like this in the modern Hollywood film-making, the art combining with the big-budgetary form of cinema.
But did it lived upon it’s big promise?
Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai is often termed as one of the most influential movies ever, why, because his epic adventure sculpted every genre of cinema, not just the westerns, tragedies but also sci-fi and action blockbusters (even Star Wars ). It spawned two hollywood remakes (2016’s Denzel and Pratt’s the latest one) and innumerable shot-to-shot reprint in the 60's-70's cinema.
It took decades to earn that status, and yes, it’s going to hold it’s stance forever. The Revenant racks on the same tract, it may be too early to propose this thought, but multiple viewings and enough contemplation will make you realize the same.
The Revenant had a very tough shooting period. It suffered many setbacks during the shooting period, primarily due to climate changes, the elusive few hours window of natural daylight. Only a few films have suffered that many setbacks and such a budget expansion (the initial $60mn budget expanded to $135mn) and came out in such a miraculous way (~$530mn in worldwide figures). The movie is worth every penny spent, worth everyone’s elbow-grease (not sure if anyone got it, did they, Mr Iñárritu).
It had one of the best team in the industry, but the two guys who totally steered the ship are Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki (sorry Leo and Hardy, but you guys did good job too!!). The duo had already won Best Director and Cinematographer Academy Awards for Birdman (Lubezki had his third consecutive after Gravity), so were the expectations from them. One can easily spot out the movie as a Lubezki Film, constructed with single shots, landscape grandeur, natural lighting, camera focusing mostly actor’s face. Lubezki totally outdid himself here, easily his best work till now (but it’s still so hard to rank this and Children of Men).
The movie works like a dark ballad, constituting a revenge drama at it’s core, combined with the great artistic vision of Iñárritu. But it’s so hard to believe that he’s the same guy who delivered the modern take of a struggling actor in Birdman, a rhetoric movie with incessant conversation (and Edward Norton), The Revenant works totally opposite of it. Screenplay of The Revenant might seem tenuous, but the movie was meant to be like that, it was a sole man’s journey engaged into survival, against the nature, exploiting the territorial cosmos. It depends on Hugh Glass’s bonding with nature and defying the elemental obstacles of it, so Iñárritu focused mainly on committing the spiritual aspect of his journey, which seems devoid of tête-à-tête but teemed with philosophical facade.
One of the best scenes of the movie, the often unnoticed one, when Hugh Glass crawls out of the ditch , and embraces the dead body of his son. At that point we see him breathing, and the next few shots are like this.
He crawls out of his grave, depicting his suffering, first lost his wife and now his son, he loses the zeal for his life, but at this point his exhalation fills up the screen… “As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight ”…. and the next aerial shot we see is edited with the breath exhalation sound of Hugh and overshot “You breathe… keep breathing”. This is the kind of cinema where you see the whole team, be it the director, cinematographer, editor, sound mixer, these few shots surmise the whole team and the craft.
The reference to the breath can be found at a few epochs (when Glass out-swims the river & in the end, when credits are rolling, Glass’s exhalation can still be heard). At each instance, the breath acts as a symbol of Hope for Hugh Glass, readying him for his revenge.
And it would be unfair to not mention the bear sequence. It was one of the most discomforting excerpt of the movie (and the movie had many like that), mainly because of the great sound-editing and mixing. The grizzly bear attack is free of the growls and rumbles, but mainly constitutes of the moans, that makes the scene so quirky, as the other creators would try to make the scene loud and shocking, they opted to grill the audience with Glass’s struggle. Moreover the bear skin also helps Glass to thwart the nature, so in a way nature shuns but nature provides too.
The movie also serves as a comeback for Ryuichi Sakamoto to Western cinema. The simple yet nerve rattling soundtrack also deserves the credit for enchanting panoramas (esp. the wolf-bison scene and the dream sequences of Glass).
“If we ended up [using] green screen with coffee and everybody having a good time, everybody will be happy, but most likely the film would be a piece of sh*t.”
— Alejandro González Iñárritu
The Revenant is beautifully envisioned story of revenge which, thanks to wonderful cinematography and a couple of powerhouse performances, has resulted into one of the most captivating viewing experiences ever, A Masterpiece.
