The Revenant (2015)

Was Tom Hardy's Texas accent authentic for the time period.
Was their such a thing as a Texas accent in the very early USA 19th century?

 

I finally saw this a couple weeks ago with high hopes and maybe that was my problem.

I found the movie boring and fanciful. The cold water scenes were a joke and they lost me at the second water scene. One water scene? Ok, I can suspend belief for one scene. More unbelievable water scenes that become a big part of the story? Um, no.
The water scenes, with snow all around meant that water was cold. Probably 40F or colder. In 40F water you lose dexterity in less than three minutes. Any more than that and he's a bobber floating down the river similar to any other log. A person may survive, meaning just clinging to life, an hour but they won't be able to help themselves because their arms and legs will not work. They will need help and an external heat source. Getting out of the water into even colder air would mean certain death.
Going back to the < 3 minutes point. Even if he is out of the water in two minutes, that means he has about one minute to get himself dry and into dry warm clothes before losing use of his limbs.

Going over the cliff was the jumping the shark moment for me and I started fast forwarding through the rest of the movie.

And boring. As pointed out. Zero character development. Just a long fanciful movie with a revenge payoff. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more had I looked at it through the lens of make believe, but doubtful, because then it still needed something interesting.

 

Not just me then.

 

incredible filmmaking ... period.

 

Maybe me being from MN and having spent a lot of time around cold water makes me more cynical.

For example, a year ago a friend, wearing thermal neoprene waders was working on his dock with water temps in the mid 40s. While working in the water, unknown to him, his younger son donned a life jacket and ran down the dock and jumped into the water. By the time my friend got his 9 year old the 20 feet back to shore the kid, shaking violently and was already starting to lose dexterity. He had to help the boy keeping him upright while they walked back to the house to get him dry and warm again.

That was after only traveling 20 feet to shore in cold water, with assistance. Contrast that to this movie where they show Glass floating down rivers with ice on the shores, bouncing off rocks, and getting himself out safely. It was just too fictional for me which goes against what I thought they were trying to do with this film.

My review, the cinematography was great. The scenery was great. The story, not so much.

 

Fair enough and there is, of course, some suspension of disbelief in "The Revenant" (the falling off the cliff thing was the worst aspect of the plot to me). The cold water thing is of course valid as you say. However, if you didn't like the story, then you just don't find the ordeal of Hugh Glass to be all that interesting. Of course, for movie, the plot was enhanced with the final squaring off of Hardy's character and Glass, which didn't happen in real life. That said, for the most part, the rest of Glass's ordeal really did happen. If survival tales aren't your thing then that's fine. I like them and liked this movie - logic problems not withstanding.

 

Right. Enuf said. I'm so sick of phony, contrived plots and dime-store psychology "character development" this movie was a breath of fresh air. In real life people don't have character arcs, aren't driven by obvious psychological motivations, and their life stories don't follow "plots" evolving over three days -- that's all theatrical contrivance. This was a beautiful metaphysical fairy tale/legend based on a old west story that may or may not have occurred. Breaking out your Field and Stream "Survival in the Wilderness" manual and a thermometer and stopwatch is a bit silly. And yet, audiences will go watch cliche hogwash like "The Avengers: Legends of Dark Lords" and swear they've seen Shakespeare in motion. If you couldn't see into Glass' and Fitzgerald's characters by the first few deeds and words out of their mouths, maybe next time Innaritu should have one wear a cape with the letter "S" and one wear a black iron mask.

 

This is exactly what I thought when I saw those scenes. I won't lie, I liked it and the cinematography was outstanding, but the "cold water" stuff you mentioned also left me..ehm..cold.
One has to wonder if they cared to show the scritp to a consultant with at least some knowledge about the way the human body works, just to make things right and more believable.

 

I like the survival stories too. Again, being from MN, Lost in the Wild by Cary Griffith was a great read and sheds some light on how tough things can be alone in the north woods, even in present day. Obviously one of the stories in that book was of a man in way over his head.
Also, the Narrative of the Captivity of Adventures of John Tanner. Fun for me because of the local landmarks described. I've been to a few of the places described in this book so I can relate to the descriptions of the terrains and the harshness of them. Not fun to read of the treatment of varying people.

 

To further the criticism of a movie I really love, I don't think the bear attack was that realistic. I have no quibbles with the CGI bear, but Glass was far more worse off from the attack than the movie portrayed. His back was basically skinned entirely and his scalp was torn off. Anyone that has endured a full on bear attack (I haven't for the record) would probably find the depiction of it in this movie pretty laughable. Certainly all accounts of the one Glass endured were far worse than what was portrayed in the movie plus he didn't kill the bear by himself; several others, after hearing his screams, came to his aid and shot the bear.

But, yeah, it's a movie.

 

For the most part I enjoyed the film but the speed at which the guy recovered from his injuries and the lack of complications from them was simply unbelievable. Also why did the bear just suddenly die from rolling down an embankment? It was in much better condition than the guy who did the same yet survived the same tumble. I also thought the cliff fall on the horse was completely beyond credibility and the dialog was mumbled by just about everybody in the film.

 

The bear didn't die from rolling down the embankment. It died to Glass first shooting it near its heart and then was able to stab it in the heart (yes, unrealistic) and that's what killed it.

 

But only after you eat the heart can you be certain it's dead.

 

You have to freeze frame Glass' back when the search party turns him over: It's sliced to ribbons.

 

If that's the case I really missed it. The cause and effect wasn't clearly illustrated. Yes he got a shot off but I thought he missed as the bear didn't even flinch. Then with the knife, yes he was stabbing it but it seemed to be in the bear's side, not its chest, and it didn't seem to be worrying the bear too much. Maybe a couple of reaction shots of the bear really feeling the impact of the bullet and knife would have helped tell the flow of events better.

 

There's been a large requirement for suspension in disbelief for audiences watching Westerns for at least 100 years. The bad guy (or native American) can't shoot and hit the broad side of a barn, but the hero shoots and five guys fall off the horses, dead. The hero and his horse do impossible stunts, jumping off cliffs, falling into rivers, riding days without food, and they always seem to make it. And the hero has a gun that holds about 47 rounds of ammo before needing to be reloaded. To some degree, you sorta/kinda have to roll with it.

You can pick apart all of these movies if you examine them very closely. As long as the story and characters are well done enough, I can overlook some deviation from reality, some dramatization from real-life events, and a little dramatic license. There is a line that gets crossed, but I didn't have a problem with Revenant. Though to tell you the truth, most of the time I was thinking, "MAN, I bet the crew was freezing when this scene was being shot!" And they were.

 

right -- I don't know why some people hold films to such high exacting standards. It's for entertainment, not instructional videos on how to survive in the wilderness.

There's lots to admire in this film:

cinematography
direction
acting
music

It's all top notch, and I doubt we'll see anything else like it in the near future.

 

I noticed that the story was not part of the list.

In that case, I'd agree.

 

the story was standard adventure fare . . . they elevated it to greatness.

 

I think it was much more than standard story fare. I think what Innaritu is going for, as in his previous film "Gravity," is creating a very linear story that breathes authenticity through a sense of genuine time and space. "Birdman" was basically one continuous shot, so theres no confusion what he was going after there, Gravity was the same - one continuous action sequence. He wants to create a sense of reality passing more or less in real time. Every long steadicam shot ( choreographed like a ballet) reflects that desire. The Revenant unfolds over a couple weeks, but Innaritu still wants you to feel this was all passing sequentially,. And that means reducing a story to a very elemental form and eschewing a lot of traditional cinematic techniques like setup and parallel storylines (we get some of that here, more than in Birdman or Gravity), and focusing on Glass's moment by moment ordeal which is why people complain "he healed too quickly" etc. etc. or why a closely followed ride on a log in a river seems so extended . That focus on a sole character of course simplifies the "story," so in place of plot Innaritu intead uses very elemental motivations to propel the film. Glass' love for his son is intense. Every moment they are onscreen is an intense moment of love and conflict. I was very moved ( and subsequently horrified) by the depth of their relationship. That's the films core: Dicaprios tremendous loss,more so than his struggle to survive the bear attack or gain revenge on Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is a fantastic character - a metaphor for human greed and violence and as a metaphor for Americas conquest of Native American and the wilderness. No he's not a tradition "movie villian" with some scheme or plot to be foiled. He's a real villian -- a sociopath driven by selfishness. The characters in the film are superbly rich: tortured, frightened, failed, and human. I don't know what else one can expect from great drama? "Death of a Salesman" the greatest American drama is about these same failings, with no more "story" than The Revenant -- which I actually think has an abundance of story, certainly more than enough to carry this fiim - it's an exploration of the dark places of the soul, and the beautiful places as well, which is the core of The Revenant, just as Aquirre the Wrath of God is about Klaus Kinsky's obsession as much as it is about a journey to find a city of gold.

 

I was referring to the source material, not the film . . .

 

And I wasn't jumping on you. I just used your quote as a springboard to reply to others complaining of a lack of story to the film. Sorry.

 

Gravity was Alfonso Cuarón.

 

Let me guess. Crummy commercial theater with terrible color accuracy, laughable contrast, and poor sharpness? Or at home on the 60"?

Not picking on you. It's important for everyone expressing views here to appreciate that this film is presented at 2.35:1 and was filmed with some the best digital cameras available. It is impossible to appreciate the work without seeing it and hearing it (lossless soundtrack) as close to reference as possible. Yes, I realize that most never will but the point is to always take this into consideration when contemplating a critique . Easy analogy is taking a widely regarded SH mastering and concluding it's over-rated after spinning on a $20 boombox.

 

Not relevant. There will be plenty of people who have watched/will watch this on gear nothing like you stated. It's either realistic... or isn't.