For any artist, trying to reach the pinnacle of success is a never-ending process. Whether the medium is painting, sculpting, or Filmmaking, a creator can never be too complacent, and although they might create a masterpiece today, their next canvas is always still blank. In the realm of filmmaking, the projection of still images moving at 24 frames a second allows writers and directors to explore the use of sound, characters, and stories to fabricate a unique sense of atmosphere. When done right, a finished movie can inspire an audience and leave them wanting more. Most filmmakers spend their entire careers trying to capture that elusive lightning in a bottle, while others like Kubrick or Scorsese seem to effortlessly build a catalog of works that are interconnected by the directors’ unique approaches to complex themes and styles.
So what happens when a director gets mired in the bog of accolades and admiration? When creation takes a backseat to hubris and ego? Can he or she break free of their public image and create that magic again? Director Alejandro Gonzålaez Iñårritu explored these very themes in his 2010 film, Birdman, which took home almost every major award along with four Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. With his polarizing style and hypnotizing long-takes, Iñårritu was the toast of the town as he explored the fact that the modern blockbuster genre is strangling filmmaking creativity. Birdman represents Hollywood’s frustration with the fact that the industry is stuck in arrested development, and the film’s success fueled our interest in the director’s next creation.
Unfortunately for us, The Revenant is a financial success and a creative disappointment. Iñårritu employs many of his usual stylistic elements of extended takes, extreme close ups and abstract imagery, but The Revenant is a second-rate spiritual successor to Birdman because it highlights many of the director’s biggest flaws and annoying instincts as a filmmaker. Pulling up stakes from Birdman’s cramped Broadway theater, Iñårritu relocates to the bitter cold landscape of the American frontier to give us an art-house revenge picture. The Revenant sacrifices dialogue and intricate plotting for a more straightforward narrative, and then it devolves into a grotesque cavalcade of scenes that showcase DiCaprio being put into more and more dehumanizing and hostile situations.
From The Revenant’s first scene, we feel a strange disconnect with its violence, and its grisly scenes becomes an artificial gloss smeared across Emmanuel Lubezki's beautiful cinematography in a shallow attempt to make us cringe and gasp in horror. Although the film’s production issues have become legendary, with stories of the crew chasing the snow all across British Columbia, its filming being limited to 90 minutes a day to catch the right sunlight, and the difficulties between the director and his cast and crew, what they ultimately managed to do was sacrifice the story in the name of technical perfection. While the beauty of the wilderness juxtaposed against the brutality of man is a long-used theme of survival movies, The Revenant finds nothing new to say on the topic, and outside of a few genuinely visceral sequences early on, the majority of The Revenant is a grim bore. Sad to say, despite its outstanding cinematography and the widespread critical acclaim it has garnered, this film, in essence, is a poorly edited piece of violence porn masquerading behind the veil of “artistic integrity.” As a follow-up to Iñårritu’s Birdman, this was a let-down of magnificent proportions.
-Mike
