The Revenant

The grand, cosmic joke of Kanye West is that he knows exactly what you think of him, and he knows exactly what you're going to think of him after he steps into the spotlight again. That's the joke. Unlike Shia LaBeouf, this is true post-structuralist performance art, in that Kanye isn't interested in hearing your criticisms of him because he already covered that before the track/award show appearance/shoe happened. How can your criticism land when your thunder has been stolen? Of course, artistic self-awareness isn't worth anything if it isn't in service of some level of rhetoric, but scratch just slightly below the surface of Kanye's most recent musical efforts, and you'll find a man expressing his fears of being a father in the only way he knows how, because try as he might, he's kind of known by everybody. It's okay if you don't like him, but the joke's on you if you don't understand him. I didn't talk about it in my review for Birdman, but to me, the anchor of the film comes when Michael Keaton passes by a man on the street shouting a speech from Macbeth. "It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," he bellows, before turning to Keaton and asking, "Too much?" Birdman is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but it knows that it is, and it's more than upfront with you about that. More so, it's all in service of discussing the lengths an artist sometimes goes to for their craft, and whether or not that's a good thing. It's okay if you don't like Birdman, but the joke's on you if you don't understand it. Or, at least, that's what I thought before I saw The Revenant, a film that is the worst kind of bad, in that it left me questioning whether Alejandro G. Inarritu really did know what he was communicating with Birdman, or if, like the titular character, he too is nothing more than an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Birdman is a film that is loud and dumb for an artistic purpose. The Revenant is a film that is just loud and dumb. During its 150 minute duration, I lost count of how many times I wanted to jump behind the camera, place my hand on Inarritu's shoulder and say, "I get it, dude. I get it. You're very, very good at making a technically brilliant visual, and we're all super proud of you, but could you please get out of your self-aggrandised sphincter and make a fucking movie?" The general public had made up its mind about The Revenant before it had come out. Inarritu and Leonardo DiCaprio had done the press junket rounds, happily declaring that the film's ridiculously tough and gruelling shoot sent them over-time and over-budget in service of artistic vision, like a creator had never done that for their creation before. It's the movies, guys, they're all fucking hard to make. Oh, did Leo actually bite into a buffalo's liver, and actually threw it up immediately? Who gives a fuck? Never mind the fact that beyond you saying so, we don't know if that's true, did you even consider the fact that a grizzled mountain man vomiting up buffalo liver is powerfully uncharacteristic of a grizzled mountain man? Of course not, because you were too preoccupied with reveling in the fact that you managed to make an actor vomit for realsies to consider whether it had any artistic worth in your film. It opens with a long, drawn out attack on American colonialists by Native Americans, in which the camera, for the most part, doesn't cut. It's horrifically violent, and entirely unsympathetic, and for all of the wrong reasons, it reminded me of the opening of Saving Private Ryan. The difference between Saving Private Ryan and The Revenant is that Saving Private Ryan is using uncompromising technical brilliance to reflect how ridiculously fucking horrifying this conflict was, whereas The Revenant is using technical brilliance to reflect how ridiculously fucking brilliant Inarritu is. The camera refuses to stay still at any moment, because it's so desperate for your astonished approval that it can't waste a single second without demonstrating to you how amazing it is that the things they're pulling off were actually pulled off. Never mind the fact that it doesn't matter if you only filmed in natural light on digital because digital will make any lighting look fine, and never mind that the fact that you filmed on digital meant that all manner of post-production touch-ups would have been done to eliminate any inconsistencies or just-straight-up-shitty-bits, because look look look, the camera just ducked because Leo swung towards it, and then he nearly got hit in the head by a Native American, and now we're following the Native American on his horse until he gets shot and falls off, and we fall off with him, and oh look, let's go see what's happening over here whilst every character played by an actor with a name you might recognise is completely safe in spite of the fact that everyone around them is dying because they're exactly where they're supposed to be to continue this hollowed out husk that's masquerading as a narrative! It's an example of this film's staunch adherence to dazzling you with practical effects blended seamlessly with digital (except for the animals), powerfully heightened violence and viscera, and actors truly committed to screaming, shouting, spitting and snarling loud enough that you forget that this is all in the service of jack shit. Leo is mauled by a bear for a five-minute scene that exists for no reason other than to be the film's reason for Leo having a tough time for the rest of it. Such technically artistic devotion is poured into every scene that it numbs you to the possibility of actually being amazed. For me, the most self-congratulatory moment happened when the camera got closer and closer to Leo's face as he lay on the ground, face contorted into a comical rage, snot and blood and drool matted to his scraggly beard, as he breathed fast and ragged. When it feels like the camera can't get any closer, Leo's breath begins to fog up the lens (digitally, not literally, mind you), until it has entirely obfuscated our vision. It's a hell of a shot that means absolutely nothing. And that's where the problem lies. Remember, I've sung the praises of films that want to dazzle you with the real before. But also remember, earlier in this review I stated that your method is your own to define so long as there is a statement behind it. In that regard, The Revenant almost seems like it's making fun of its arthouse contemporaries by entirely neglecting its rhetoric unless Leo is having one of his multiple fever dreams that continually throw bricks at your head labeled, "What This All Means". In one particular stinker, he recalls a conversation he had with his Native American wife before she was murdered by French colonialists. She says that to know the strength of a tree, you look not at the treetops, but at the roots. "Yes," I replied. "Leo's a tree. He won't die because his roots are strong. I get it." Leo then finds himself standing in the middle of nowhere, inside of a demolished church. His dead Native American son, murdered by Tom Hardy and therefore the motivation for Leo to not die so he may murder him right back, appears and they embrace, until Leo blinks and finds his son has been replaced by a tree. "Yes," I replied. "His son is also a tree. He lives on in Leo, the other tree. I get it." Ah, but look again, and you will see that this tree has grown in the centre of the church. "Oh my god, yes," I replied. "God is a tree. God is the one true tree. I fucking get it." It gets worse, though. Either out of fear that the general audience wouldn't be able to keep up, or to once again point and laugh at the pretentious intellectuals who want to find meaning in a gross torture porn, the film ends with Leo literally stating the film's theme to you. After a so-fucking-long-and-outrageously-violent-that-it-becomes-funny fight scene between Leo and Hardy, Leo is choking Hardy to death. Hardy says something along the lines of, "You came all this way just for revenge? Well, enjoy it. Nothing you do will ever bring your boy back." Yeah duh, Hardy, but that's when Leo looks up and sees the Native Americans who have been tracking him from the film's beginning. "Revenge is in God's hands...not mine," Leo says, and pushes Hardy into the water, down river, where the Native Americans scalp him, cross the river, and leave Leo be. Hoo boy, not only has the film spent the majority of its duration being relatively respectful towards Native Americans before trotting out the old "noble savage" trope, and not only are we expected to believe that a group of people whose lives involve tracking took this long to find someone in the fucking snow, but we're also supposed to be amazed by these two lines of dialogue, in spite of the fact that they're revelations that anyone with half a brain could surmise within the first 30 minutes, or that anyone could know from watching any tepid, midday-movie revenge flick. Excess is the true killer. This film's unrelenting technical prowess numbs you to all of its shocks, which makes its cookie-cutter approach to narrative and symbolism all the more hard to accept. Sound and fury with nothing beneath truly does signify nothing. The Revenant is hard, cold, cruel, fake, and lame. The score was good, though.