What's the verdict /tv/?
I normally dislike Iñárritu, but this one pretty much sidestepped all his flaws (contrived dialogue, pretentiousness) and concentrated on pure visual storytelling. It was like a 2h30mins episode of Bear Grylls, with Lubezki on cinematography duties. Thoroughly enjoyed, though I don't feel Leo's performance was particularly amazing or anything. Just decent, compotent. Hardy was probably better.
>>63958846
>compotent
idiot
>>63958846
Dicaprio literally ruined it.
>contrived dialogue, pretentiousness
>The Revenant, the new Leonardo DiCaprio western, bids to be also the last western. That once-quintessential Hollywood genre has lost its popularity to sci-fi and comic-book flicks that trendily dramatize social tensions — along with offering escape into perpetual adolescence. The Revenant reworks the older westerns’ exploration of American history, and of the issues arising from the clash between civilization and perceived wilderness, into a spectacle replete with contemporary social distress. That makes it an Obama western.
>DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass, a guide and hunter for a fur-trading expedition in the 1820s, humbly embodies the country’s humane, multicultural hopes, yet he’s stuck amid venal, weak-principled countrymen. Burdened with the racist legacy of European settlers, Glass is haunted by the killing of his Pawnee wife and guards his biracial son. Glass’s ambivalence and fortitude are tested by his trouble with John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), a low-life among the government-sanctioned trappers. The unhinged, Bible-quoting carnivore Fitzgerald is a lying, killing incarnation of America’s evils.
>The epic, overlong murderous opposition between Glass and Fitzgerald reveals perfidious man in nature, and nature as alienating as it is “red in tooth and claw.” Their conflict symbolizes the war between civility and savagery, though it is not the classic sheriff-vs.-outlaw antagonism. In this End of the West western, the greed, selfishness, and brutal cynicism come straight out of our contemporary paranoid atmosphere. The Revenant portrays the U.S. as a ghost of its once idealized, rough-hewn self, a nation troubled by its treacherous past while slogging through an onerous, deadly present — thus, an Obama allegory.
>Oscar-winning Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu doesn’t apologize for American history; he even avoids the Mexican–American War and the policies of European colonization that might specifically explain Manifest Destiny. Yet, by playing a Clooney–Damon–Pitt game, Iñárritu uses the western genre for a simplified critique of American temperament: Glass always physically conflicts with threatening forces, including bedrock, redneck conservatism.
>His virtue is lamely represented by romantic memories and race-conscious fatherhood. (“They don’t hear your voice, they only see your skin,” he warns his teenage son.) His struggle is epitomized in a showpiece battle with a grizzly bear. It’s like a superhero origin myth via computer-generated F/X. Glass is left nearly dead, prey to Fitzgerald’s ruthlessness. Fisheye close-ups of DiCaprio in agony recall A Clockwork Orange’s cynicism, and his snowy travails repeat that Quaalude crawl in The Wolf of Wall Street. After relentless melodramatic setbacks, phenomenal resilience wins him revenge.
Remember how Vietnam-era westerns (Little Big Man, Soldier Blue, Bite the Bullet, High Plains Drifter) expressed liberal American guilt? Well, the trendy ISIS-era politics of Iñárritu’s western fantasy prohibit cathartic heroism. This frustration and reticence add to The Revenant’s Obama aspect. DiCaprio and the prodigious Tom Hardy sink into their characters’ obstinacy to show white American moral descent (while the knowing Native Americans bide their time stereotypically — a millennial flip of their passivity in Dances with Wolves). After ear-chewing combat with Fitzgerald, similar to Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck’s mauling each other in The Boys from Brazil, Glass stares at the audience with a look of “This is not who we are” hopelessness.
>The Revenant is an accusatory western. Iñárritu forces the audience to judge imperialism, starting with Emmanuel Lubezki’s preening, relentless camera (just as in last year’s dreadful Birdman) weaving among the corrupt characters. Lubezki’s photography is pellucid, as always, but whereas he achieved a newly discovered, paradisiacal look for Terrence Malick’s The New World, the American wild here seems inhospitable, dangerous. Before the mano a mano brawl, a Bierstadt-worthy sun ray moves through a mountain pass. The fleeting, stunning sight suggests a dying of light, a nation’s coming eclipse.
>>63958904
>>63958940
Armond hates any modern film that shows ambition.
>>63958965
>>63958940
>>63958904
This is the first armond review i've read that I genuinely agree with on all counts.
This man might truly be the contrarian we deserve.
>>63958904
>>63958940
>>63958965
Dumb niggerposter
>>63958971
He explains why it isn't ambitious in this post senpai:
>>63958965
>>63958846
>with Lubezki on cinematography duties.
I'm guessing you're saying this because you love how pretty those pictures turned out, right?
>>63959025
"Obama Western" means nothing. Armond always has a buzzword/phrase he falls back on in a review. "Post 9/11 cynicism" is another one he constantly uses. The man is hack.
>>63958846
The ending was too convenient and destroyed my immersion.
This would have been an amazing 2-hour Western revenge thriller.
But there's an extra half-hour of sub-Malick symbolism and bungled attempts at weighty topics that come off as childish. It says something that every time Inarritu started going all Art House Director on us all I could think about was how much better The Grey was at mixing artistic intentions and survivalist thrills.
It's still pretty damn solid but fucking hell Alejandro, just embrace your inner B-movie director and everyone will come out happier.
>>63959092
>Glass stares at the audience with a look of “This is not who we are” hopelessness.
> (while the knowing Native Americans bide their time stereotypically — a millennial flip of their passivity in Dances with Wolves
>>63959092
>>63959092
That is what I was referring to specifically. The native american shit really was almost entirely made up from whole cloth, and they attribute some of IRL glass' mastery of his surroundings to save himself to random acts of vengeance and kindness by natives.
>>63959055
>all these people turning on Lubezki cause he won an Oscar
>>63959092
His arguments are absolutely thought-out and reasonable, unlike your bemoaning twaddle.
Too bad it's essentially a genre slut. Not illuminating, penetrating, or truth dealing as art should be. Chivo carried it, Terrence utilizes Chivo to a higher degree.
>>63959546
Lubezki innovates with Malick and plebs it down for Innaritu. Yet he wins the Oscars for his lesser work. HOW did The Tree of Life get best cinematography I'll never know
>>63959803
Whenthe flush of a newborn sun fell first on Eden's green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mold;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?"
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a pretentious fraud, but it’s taken some time to understand the precise nature of his fraudulence. For a while, it seemed like much of the blame could be shifted to his former screenwriting partner, Guillermo Arriaga, with whom he made a triptych of everything-is-connected dramas that used violence as an organizing theme. Their collaboration, which started with the exhilarating Amores Perros, diminished into didactic shtick by the time they got through 21 Grams and Babel, but Arriaga went to the well a fourth time on his own with The Burning Plain, his laughable debut feature, so perhaps it was Iñárritu’s screenwriter who was holding him back. Then Iñárritu made Biutiful, a 150-minute pile-up of tragedy and transcendence that straightened out the chronology, but was no less oppressive and self-serious. It helped clarify why Iñárritu, for all his technical bravado, is such a terrible filmmaker: He’s incapable of modulation. He deals in intensity, in conflict, in grand poetic flourishes. He’s a goddamn artist!
>>63958846
I loved it
My only problem was the cheesy floating ghost wife.
Did the director suddenly turn into Del Toro?
>>63959260
Seeing as this is a western, I thought the malick influence was done well actually seeing as shitty and actual malick film (brave new world) was. I even payed for BNW in theaters. What a fucking sucker I was.
>>63958904
>>63958940
>>63958965
Pleb here
What the fuck did he just say?
He didnt say anything if the movie was competently made or shit
It would be really funny if Leo gets pity oscar for this mediocre (even compared to his usual) performance.
>>63960180
The "LEO FOR AN OSCAR!" thing is pretty much a meme now. His performance has no bearing on it. Has he ever been beaten by someone who gave a worse performance than him?
>>63958904
>>63958940
>>63958965
Too political, into the trash it goes
>>63958846
There is nothing wrong with purely visual storytelling. It's always a good sign
Seeing him raped by that bear was terrible.
I imagine a bears penis is massive and cant imagine how horrible it must feel.
>>63961967
Didn't mean for it to come off as negative. Cinema is a visual medium, not enough directors treat it as such.
>>63958846
>What's the verdict /tv/?
From a non patrician point of view I enjoyed the hell out of it. Watched last night and it seemed like a long story of survival and loss.
Kept saying to myself how can it get any worse for Leo's character.
>>63962645
Yeah agreed. Any part that people would consider boring was made enjoyable out of the pure beauty of Alberta. Secondary bear attack could have been cut though. Scene was a bit long.
was also loving the ost the whole movie and knew it sounded familiar so I looked it up and it just happened to be Ryuichi Sakamoto.
dat Fitzgerald/Glass fight scene
i loved it.
>>63958965
>Obama
This is like reddit for Armond, anything he doesn't like is automatically linked with Obongo.
