Weekend Watch: “The Revenant”

There’s a phrase that gets thrown around a lot: “style over substance.” Movies that embody this phrase are often visually exciting and unique, but they’re shallow on a thematic level. Sometimes, being shallow is okay; action movies benefit greatly from style, so even some cliché entries in the genre (like this year’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”) provide solid entertainment.

Strong style can be used as a great tool to cover up a lack of substance, but just because a movie’s good quality is an illusion doesn’t mean it’s not necessarily real. If a sweeping, sad movie score plants an emotional seed that the story itself lacks, the effect can still be genuine. It might not be as strong or cathartic as an emotional reaction caused by the story, but it’s not inherently fake just because it’s caused by something artificial.

So while I found “The Revenant” to be pretty shallow when I looked at it in retrospect, that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of it as I was watching. It’s the kind of movie that the phrase ‘style over substance’ was created for, but that style is so amazingly done that the illusion works better than it has any right to, creating an immersive and frequently captivating experience that makes you forget how hollow most of it is.

The first way “The Revenant” creates the illusion is by featuring some great performances. Tom Hardy gives such an engaging performance as John Fitzgerald, by far the most complex character in the film. Between his gruff, barely intelligible voice, his wide eyes, and his twisted moral code, Fitzgerald is such a captivating presence, and Hardy is a huge part of that. Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter won’t get any credit for their roles, but they’re both really solid in supporting roles.

Ironically, Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Hugh Glass is the one that can make you remember how shallow the movie is. He definitely does a good job—he manages to keep you interested and invested for the bulk of the 156-minute running time that’s focused on him, in the same way that Robert Redford gave a silent solo performance in “All is Lost.” But the best performances of the year are usually performances that convey all the nuances and complexities of the character, and Hugh Glass isn’t really a nuanced or complex character. Hardy is able to squeeze every ounce of complexity that he can out of Fitzgerald’s dialogue, but DiCaprio doesn’t particularly do anything to transcend the lack of characterization on the page. He plays what he’s told to, and does a fine job.

By seeing Glass go through so much shit trying to survive, you realize the whole journey is fairly one-note. There are interesting new challenges and new survival tactics that come up throughout the movie—like, of course, the scene of Glass removing a horse’s organs and then curling up to sleep inside its body—but the bulk of his journey is just slow recovery and the struggle to survive.

Unlike Fitzgerald, there isn’t much inner psychology going on with Glass. He’s driven to survive by the desperate need to get revenge on the man who killed his son. He feels grief over his dead son, and the dead Native American woman who gave birth to him. That’s about it, honestly.

[Spoilers for the next three paragraphs.] If there’s one central theme that “The Revenant” seems to explicitly be going for, it’s this idea that revenge is best left for the Creator, whether that means nature or some nebulous spiritual force like God or fate. This isn’t a bad idea for a revenge thriller, honestly. The real-life Hugh Glass, after tracking down John Fitzgerald and confronting him, decided not to kill him because of the heavy penalty for killing a soldier. This could’ve been incorporated well into the heavily fictionalized film to fit in with this theme of mercy and the relief of letting go of your desperate anger, but nope. Glass goes ahead and, effectively, kills Fitzgerald.

The most frustrating part of this isn’t that Glass goes back on the lesson he heard earlier. The movie could’ve easily made it appear like Glass considered showing mercy, then gave in to his anger and bloodlust. The frustrating part is that the movie acts like he is showing Fitzgerald mercy. Sure, he shoots him in the shoulder, stabs him in the gut, and sends him downriver to a group of ruthless natives who will undoubtedly seal Fitzgerald’s fate—but apparently since he didn’t deal the actual killing blow, he’s leaving the revenge to God.

And then the last few minutes depict one final scene of stumbling through the forest, with Glass imagining his dead wife…and, in the last shot, turning to stare straight into the camera. I gotta say, that’s a pretty dumb, self-important final shot. Does it really mean anything, or does it just seem like it’d be the cool, artsy thing to do?

Yeah, you could read more themes into the story. You could say it’s about the battle between man and nature, or the fundamental cruelty of humanity, or something. But I got the same sense I got from the last Alejandro G. Iñárritu movie, “Birdman”: a lot of the movie seemed like it was supposed to be meaningful, but it really wasn’t. I guess that’s why people call his movies pretentious; there’s this appearance of meaningfulness that the movie itself doesn’t actually back up.

Still, if all of Iñárritu’s movies are that way, like I said, this one does a pretty great job of maintaining the illusion. There’s a lot of people who are responsible for that; the production design, costume design, makeup, and visual effects are all pretty perfect. I mean, that bear attack alone is worth some recognition.

But by far the biggest asset to “The Revenant” is Emmanuel Lubezki, who has a ridiculous track record at this point. It’s difficult for me sometimes to tell where the director’s work ends and the cinematographer’s begins, but I have to imagine that a lot of the amazing camerawork in “Birdman” and “The Revenant” is really thanks to Lubezki’s creativity and flawless execution. Without the disorienting distortion of Lubezki’s fisheye-esque shots, without the protracted Steadicam takes, without the visceral visual immersion of the brutal battle scenes, without the stunning visuals of wintery forest landscapes and frigid mountain ranges, “The Revenant” would not be nearly as captivating as it is.

And “The Revenant” really is captivating. Its running time could probably shaved down a little (maybe just 10 or 15 minutes, so Glass’s recovery doesn’t feel too easy and unrealistic), and maybe that’d be a better choice for a focused revenge story—maybe Iñárritu would’ve been better off in general trying to tell a focused, visceral revenge story instead of this faux-meditation on nature and death and life and retribution or whatever. But that’s not what Alejandro G. Iñárritu likes to do. He doesn’t like to tell modest, low-key stories. He likes to shoot for the sky, even when there’s nothing up there.

Grade: B