The Revenant (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2015)

Just saw this. I pretty much agree with what many members here (Rutledal, Britton, Scherp…) have already said, visually great but the story is too sluggish, especially towards the end. All those dream sequences started to annoy me at some point. I also kept thinking of Malick but also a bunch other directors, heck there was even a Jodorowsky reference. But in spite of the criticism, I really enjoyed it anyhow.
7/10

I was curious about this movie, haven’t seen all of Iñarritu movies but apart from Amores Perros didn’t really appreciate his films. Even with usually some great acting performances, it seems there’s always something missing in his cinema at least to me. Birdman was perhaps the best example of a film made not for the public a specific one or a general one, but made purely for the awards in mind.
I think Iñarruti makes films for those people who don’t have the patience to watch those slow burners with undefined meaning but great in pure artistic terms(Malick for instance), so they turn to films like this one as the perfect excuse to show their intellectuality.
I’ve read the reviews from the critics I’m used to read, and I wasn’t surprised how none of them liked The Ravenant, I don’t always agree with them, but one thing in common they have is that all like films with substance regardless of its the type and form.
The good things in the film are the photography work and the acting, the use of the landscape is very beautiful indeed.
What’s missing then? Well something more than a long succession of events, for a moment I thought I was watching one of those spags with horses riding from one point of tabernas to another, and it wasn’t a case of style over substance, sometimes style can be everything. The mystical part of the film doesn’t work it even spoils the nice terrain story that it going on. Men’s like DiCaprio character find the hard way that they will cease to exist they are a dying breed, well some call progress or even evolution, sometimes it’s bad but it’s inevitable.
Not a case of a real turkey it deserves to be watch yes, the director was faithful to his ideas but really don’t understand the hype of this so called “new cinema”, and let’s face it, a film like Aguirre the wrath of God from Herzog or Jeremiah Johnson are so much better, The Revenant somehow tries to be both but fails.
5/10

Frankly I am amazed at the lukewarm, almost negative, reception of the movie among all of you, ahaha… I found the movie to be an amazing theatrical experience, a wild ride, a breathtaking 2 hours, beautifully shot, great score, a towering directorial achievement. so what if the script isnt friggin Shakespeare :wink:

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I’ts not the script

It’s the lack of meaning, some of my favourite films almost don’t have a plot, but there’s a purpose, and i clearly couldn’t avoid that feeling of a bad spag with our hero going from difficult situation to another, or like a friend said to me The Revenant seemed (to him) like a big episode of Mr Bean, but not so funny situations.

To be honest i really don’t like Inarruti films

A little insulting that, El Topo, if I’m honest. I think Innaritu’s films are almost uniformly excellent (Birdman is the only one I didn’t entirely take to), and I can promise you categorically that my love of his pictures has nothing whatsoever to do with a desire to “show my intellect”. I am roughly as intellectual as a sack of potatoes, my friend.

In fact, if I too was inclined to offer a broad presumption about other peoples’ movie preferences (and I’m not), I might wonder if the widespread blanket snorting derision of his movies in general and the dismissal of The Revenant in particular wasn’t in itself an excuse by those who did so to display some cinematic snobbery of their own.

But I wouldn’t say that, of course. :smile:

That’s fair enough, definitely.

These are 2 quite strange ideas.
Birdman and The Tree of Life are both movies which are extremely fun to watch, and belong to the most fascinating of the last years. And I don’t like them for their content, content is always a secondary aspect, but how they develop a narrative structure with this content, how they create absorbing images out of it.

I doubt that so far Inarritu has the winning of prizes in his mind when he creates his films. His films look like he does what he likes to do.

I think the main reason for backlash The Revenant is receiving from part of the audience and the critics, is that they now expect too much from Inarritu. Birdman set the bar very very high. The Revenant was great in some aspects, but not all-around great like the Birdman.

But I think that The Revenant was very much tailor-made with awards on mind. Not that I mind that. To stay strictly intellectual, I’ll use a sports analogy: Stephen Curry definitely plays to win the final prize. If along the way he displays the greatest set of basketball skills ever to be seen in professional basketball, all the better for us, the audience.

Why would that be?

Seems to me one aspect is not more important than another, at least not by definition. It’s a bit like this discussion what is more important, style or content. It simply depends on the author/film maker (or whatever). And the reader/viewer, of course. Some prefer style over content, others prefer content over style, but that doesn’t make one thing secondary to another.

That’s only my opinion (like everything else I write).

For me content is some kind of MacGuffin. There must be some to keep the film going, but what counts is less the content itself, but how the director makes something out of it in visual and narrative terms.

So for me the content is not unimportant, but comparatively secondary. For others it may have more importance, but I don’t like films for their contents, but for their style.
Still I’m able to blame films for a style over content aspect. But then the style is shallow, the style does not work, the style is the problem.

In other words I prefer every day directed films over screenplay films. Films which dwell mostly on good screenplays can be very entertaining, but they never get higher than 8/10, and for that they must already be well directed and acted.

But what really counts is what happens on the screen beyond 8/10. The enigma of cinema. :wink:

Yes you’re probably right, never seen things that way, it’s a different perspective from the same problem, reverse snobbery it’s a good point.
The ultimate problem of being an intellectual is that it’s not easy, I’ve tried but ultimately I failed, it’s a natural thing I guess.
Anyway worst than reverse snobbery is the false one, that I don’t have.