Cult-Movie Review: The Revenant (2015)

A revenant is a person who comes back from the dead…a ghost. 

In Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant (2015), audiences encounter a man of the year 1823 who simply refuses to die: trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo Di Caprio).  

In essence, he returns from the dead multiple times.

Glass manages not to die -- to return to the realm of the mortal -- by simply enduring one breath at a time. As he notes at one point in the narrative: “you fight for every breath.”

“You breathe. Keep breathing.”

Driven by the specter of his dead wife, a beautiful Pawnee, and his murdered son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), Glass endures and survives physical challenge after physical challenge. 

Glass is compelled to survive by visions of his loved ones, but also by the Earthly demand to enact revenge on one person, the selfish murderer of his boy: John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy).

At the end of his harrowing journey, Hugh Glass also comes to a reckoning about revenge, and the fact that, finally, it is not in his hands to enact…and nor should it be.

Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015) are such very different films -- with different aims -- and yet both are cinematic masterpieces.

Birdman is an incredible, funny, multi-faceted commentary on the dichotomy between pop art and high art, and the way that one actor navigates it.

Thanks to its breathtaking photography and performances, The Revenant is absolutely beautiful to behold. It is a haunting, throttling vision of the world that "was." coupled with the frightening imagery of the world that "will be" (epitomized by a mountain of buffalo skull).

Perhaps The Revenant is less overtly an intellectual or cerebral experience than Birdman was, but the remarkable consolation is that this film feels entirely more visceral. I am aware that some viewers apparently feel that The Revenant is more like an endurance test than it is a fully-fleshed out movie narrative.  

I would debate that assumption.

The Revenant very much concerns a man who will do anything to achieve a particular end -- revenge -- only to learn that his life's purpose is finally, bankrupt. That bankruptcy, meanwhile is also seen in the film's depiction of capitalism (represented by the mountain of dead buffalo.)  But the overall idea is about the human experience; the notion that we run around, every day, trying desperately to achieve ends that, finally, are irrelevant in the face of nature, or in the face of mortality.

But first thing's first. There is no doubt that The Revenant is absolutely compelling --and gory -- and appears authentically as though it is was filmed on another planet (or at least in another time period). 

I have tried to locate and harness the best words to describe Emmanuel Lubezki's cinematography but keep coming up short. I keep returning to "miraculous", or "near miraculous." So much of The Revenant's artistic success depends on its depiction of the untamed world, and the plight of those men seeking to tame it.

On one hand, I am relieved to know that such untamed beauty still exists on this planet, and was available to be filmed. 

On the other, I am dazzled and impressed by the production team, and its efforts to bring this world to our movie theaters and TV sets.

It's not just the landscape, or rather the visual presentation of the landscape that is stunning. If it were, we could achieve the same delight from viewing a painting, or a photograph. Instead, Inarritu's staging of the action in this untamed world is simply breathtaking.

The film’s opening attack on Glass’s trapping party by an Arikara hunting party, for example, is a masterpiece of brilliant staging and editing.

Watch, for example, how Inarritu’s moving camera constantly erases the old foreground and creates a new one in the frame. 

He works in this fashion so that objects (and fierce attackers) may dart into view, surprise the viewer, and thus suggest the sudden, brutal nature of the attack. Since the foreground keeps shifting -- always in motion -- the assault on the senses keeps coming. There is no "safe" zone in this attack.  The attack isn't brief. Attack is perpetual, sustained and unrelenting.  

At least that's how it feels to the senses.  

Considering the idea of a frontier --- and the unknown encroaching on all sides -- this is perhaps the perfect application of a moving camera. We feel, on a visceral level, what it means to be under siege in the wilderness, and by those who know the land better than we do.  We might flee, and we might run, but the incursion keeps violating the sanctity of the frame and therefore our sense of comfort or safety.

Other moments also legitimately qualify as stunning. Glass rides a cresting waterfall…and survives.  He endures a brutal bear attack…and survives. He races across an icy plain on a horse, and rides his steed over a mountaintop…and survives.

Each of these moments, on its own, is jaw-dropping in the extreme. I cannot stress enough how convincing, how amazing, how immersive, these moments are. I appreciated every single set piece. The action in the film is incredible.

I suppose the opposing point of view here is that these moments, immersive as they may be, do not add up to a believable experience.

The critics of the film would tell us that in The Revenant there’s chance. There’s luck. There’s incredible good luck. And then there’s Hugh Glass.

Perhaps this is the point where the director's facility for magical reality comes into play and ameliorates such concerns. Glass is supposed to be a “revenant,” someone who has returned from the dead, and it is clear that he is impelled to survive by his driving quest, his need to avenge the death of his son. He struggles to survive -- and does survive -- because he must; because he is overpowered by his drive.

How is that drive manifested? Delightfully, not in terms of violence or hatred or rage (the emotion du jour, of our national dialogue). Throughout the film, Hugh is girded by flashbacks of his beatific wife and his loving son. 

At one point, she is even seen to be literally hovering above Glass, like a guardian angel. The implication may be simply that she watches over him; or that his faith in her drives him to continue; to endure.  Perhaps, by dying, Glass has interfaced with a world beyond our own, and that connection with the other world permits him to endure.

In other words, Glass survives because either his wife is guarding him, or he believes his wife is guarding him.  Perhaps it is her memory which helps keep him alive. 

In terms of history, we know that Hugh Glass did survive his ordeal, though The Revenant no doubt takes liberties with the truth. Still this "based on a true story" veneer this is another factor that helps the film's gauntlet read as more believable and less fantastic.

Many have also detected a powerful anti-capitalist statement in The Revenant. 

They are correct to do so. Powaqa’s father, a vengeful Native American makes a very direct comment about how the white man as stolen “everything” from his people, including “the land” and “the animals.”

The film’s villain, Fitzgerald is often explicitly equated too, with material wealth.

He wants to hold onto the boat. He wants to hold on to the pelts. He desires a reward for staying behind and taking care of Glass. 

His actions all originate with his ubiquitous desire for the acquisition of material wealth.

Glass's vision of the skull mountain showcases the logical ending of such overwhelming desire; a strip-mining of the environment and the animals. They will all die or be destroyed to sate our human need to "own" things.  

Soon, the only things we "own" will be a vast boneyard of the used up, the gutted.

These visions, coupled with the anti-capitalist statement very strongly relate to Glass's mission of revenge. Whether the quest is to be rich, or to kill an enemy out of revenge, the endeavor is ultimately pointless.

In the former case, you die alone, and you can't take money with you. Eventually, the world and resources around you will be destroyed, if everybody subscribes to the same philosophy.

In the latter case, revenge will not bring back the dead. Contrarily, it may actually dishonor the dead.

Both ideas -- material wealth and bloody revenge-- are, finally, bankrupt ones that run strongly against the principles we see espoused by the Pawnee, for example. In the last frames of the film, Glass looks up, in the direction of the camera. He has finally let go of revenge -- and just barely -- still lives.

His expression is worth commenting on. He doesn't exactly break the fourth wall, but Glass certainly looks in the general direction of the camera.  It's as if he's saying "now what?"  The philosophy that has kept him alive, kept him moving, kept him warm in the frozen wasteland, even, is bankrupt.

To what -- and whom -- shall he now devote his days?

Glass must choose to change, and stop subscribing to the petty values of his culture. This idea is given voice early in the film, on another occasion as well.

Early on, for example, there is a memorable visual transition from Glass’s cloudy breath to the clouds over a mountain range.  This moment is not merely pretty, make no mistake. The two shots suggest that man, in settling the Americas, is becoming God over the planet. Man's breath and God’s breath are directly equated by the symbolism.

Later, one can absolutely connect Glass’s decision to leave revenge to “God” to a reckoning that man should not settle the land, and should not progress to conquer the Americas, instead leaving its natural beauty to its original inhabitants.

Whether you agree with this philosophical sentiment or not, the way that Inarritu forges the connection -- through a remarkable and symbolic visual transition -- is quite beautiful and quite powerful. This is precisely the kind of rich, illustrative symbolism  that elevates the film beyond its action genre roots.  

In a certain sense, The Revenant really is a “prestige” horror or action movie, with a focus on violence, blood, and even gore. It is a film that makes a character run a deadly and harrowing gauntlet to achieve his goals. It also boasts a pro-social point, that revenge is not a worthy venture.

The magic realism in the film places the dead (or revenants) on the same plane of existence with the livng. In some cases, the dead can signal to the rest of us that love doesn't die. 

In other examples -- such as the buffalo skull mountain -- we see signs of a dark, used-up future.

In both cases, Inarritu's visuals seem to tell us one thing: that the dead don't want us, the shepherds of the Earth, to follow vain pursuits. 

That's the message that the dead convey to the living with such haunting power in The Revenant.

Cult-Movie Review: Birdman (2014)

What is Birdman (2014)?

The answer to that question is not exactly clear-cut, or simple.

On a surface level, the Academy Award-winning film from director Alejandro Inarritu is the immersive story of a once-popular movie actor -- Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) -- who attempts to make a comeback that he, rather than his fans, feels is legitimate.

His fans desire desperately to see him in Birdman 4. However, Riggan believes that his quest for legitimacy leads to Broadway, and to a small theatrical production of a Raymond Carver short story.

Along the way to the play's opening night, Riggan contends with a disruptive actor, Mike Shiner (Ed Norton), who considers Riggan’s commitment to “art” somehow inferior to his own. 

Disturbingly, Riggan also sees and hears his feathered (and fictional) alter-ego -- Birdman -- at times….and the superhero is not always a benevolent premise. Rather, he is an insistent one.

Birdman is thus about a lot of things: acting, Hollywood, the theater, critics, and superhero films. 

The film’s most unique quality, perhaps, is its intentionally paradoxical mode of expression. 

On one hand, Birdman is lensed in a series of riveting, brilliantly-orchestrated long-takes. A dedicated attempt is made, via editing, to bridge these takes together, thus creating a kind of quasi-“filmed in one take” view.

Make no mistake, this approach is about immediacy, and about immersion too. The camera follows Thomson from locale to locale, from back-stage onto the street, and back to the theater again, and this mode creates a sense of urgency and tense, “you are there” realism.

It's more than that, actually.  

With the focus on personal squabbles, relationships gone bad, a possible unwanted pregnancy, drug addiction, and even, perhaps, suicidal behavior, Birdman might aptly be described as belonging to the school of aesthetics known as "dirty realism."  

That's explicitly the terrain of Raymond Carver (1938-1988) as a short story writer. The author wrote his literary works about blue collar individuals struggling and facing these very problems. And Thomson, in the film, is producing a play based on Carter's writing, and world view.

But then -- simultaneously -- Birdman adopts a different and opposite technique too.  

It violates its carefully-crafted sense of "dirty" reality to depict Thomson utilizing telekinesis (!), flying through the streets of Manhattan, or conversing with his superhero alter-ego.

Some critics have termed Inarritu’s approach here “magical realism.” They register the realistic tone and depiction of Thomson’s world, overall, and then the unexplained invasion of magical or supernatural elements, which go totally unexplained.

As viewers, we fill in the ambiguity about these fantasy moments with our own answers. 

Birdman is actually about mental illness, some critics report. Thomson is not merely a struggling actor, but a man bordering on schizophrenia as he tries to keep all the elements in his life from waging war upon one another.

Other critics view the film as being a commentary on the discipline or process of acting itself.  

Thomson may be playing a character in a dramatic play, but part of his mind is still occupied by the character he once played -- a superhero -- and the universe he once inhabited as Birdman. That universe is a place of flight, superheroes, exploding helicopters, and so forth. Accordingly, Thomson can’t purge his previous role from his imaginative psyche, and so still interacts, uncomfortably with it.

Both such interpretations are valid, and backed-up by events as they unfold in the film.  

Yet I view Birdman in terms of a different dichotomy.  On his odyssey of dirty realism and magical realism, Thomson veers and lunges between the poles of popular culture and high culture, and struggles to find personal and professional validity in either.

If we accept here the parameters of an “elite” vs. “populist” debate, we can explicitly tie Birdman into the larger context or conversation this nation has been undergoing since a least 2010 about politics, among other things. 

Who is the appropriate gatekeeper for our society? Do the people choose what they like and desire (as evidenced by pop culture) and where our culture should head? Or do a group of elites manufacture consent and guide us to their pre-ordained destination? Do they determine good taste (in terms of high art), and even the brand of leadership our country should have?

This is Birdman’s galvanizing crisis, one might conclude. Thomson can apparently only achieve self-respect from the outside approval of high culture gatekeepers (like the critic, Tabitha Dickson [Lindsay Duncan] who despises him).  

And he can only achieve pop culture fame via his career link to Birdman and the pop culture, which is epitomized in the film by Riggan's encounters with viral videos, movie posters, and even Twitter accounts.

Let me explain how these two worlds collide.  

Set on Broadway -- again in the world of dirty realism explored by Carver -- Birdman (the film) inhabits the world of the stage, of theater critics and the gatekeepers I mentioned. This is the world of Shiner, Dickson, and literary masters.  This world is small, cliquish and has hard/fast rules. It is a world guarded by reputations of literary excellence (Carver), starving-but -committed actors who commit to roles, not to fame or fortune, and by critical gatekeepers who assure that pretenders are not allowed in.  

If such pretenders do break in, they are exposed as fakes or wannabes.

But then, the world of the popular movies -- of superheroes -- invades the world of the theater in Birdman. Reality is disrupted by Thomson’s flights of fantasy.  

These flights of fantasy are all about popular but fantastic things, works of, for lack of a better term, "low" art. 

Telekinesis. 

Superheroes. 

Blood and guts battles over city streets.  

The “fever dream,” pop-cultural elements of the film invade the always-moving, always panning immersive '"dirty" reality of the theater world.

One might conclude that this is all a metaphor for real life in the 21st century. Pop culture has invaded every other aspect of the culture. It has crashed through the barriers, blowing right past the gatekeepers.  

Indeed, the gatekeepers who once existed -- folks like Tabitha Dickson -- have been replaced or co-opted by fan boy/fan girl critics who are receptive to fantasy, horror, science fiction, and comic books. 

Superhero projects, meanwhile, have matriculated from the silver screen to TV, to Broadway even.  

The pop culture keeps pushing against high culture, and keeps invading it. 

What does it accomplish by doing so? Well, it erases the boundaries between these poles; the distinctions that differentiate these forms of art.

Birdman echoes that erasing of the boundaries in its dual but paradoxical visual approach of dirty vs. magical realism.

Thomson, after confronting Dickson, realizes that he will never be able to satisfy the demands of the old, but rapidly vanishing "high" culture. 

He will never achieve the respect of the critics. They will never see him as anything but the guy who played a superhero, and who had the money to spearhead a vanity project on Broadway.

But Thomson also concludes, via his muse, Birdman, that he has a path forward.  Modern audiences are changing too. They don’t really desire philosophizing, powerful dialogue and intimate characterization. Tastes have changed, and audiences want the blood and violence of the pop culture now.  

Accordingly, Riggan amends his play (which he directs) to bring violence and blood into the theater in a “realistic” way the theater has never seen before.  

How?

He shoots himself in the face on stage.

This act, which blows off his nose, apparently, demonstrates Riggan's total commitment to the craft of acting (so that high culture cannot complain that he is a pretender). But his pop-culture alter-ego, Birdman represents the voice that allows him to bring blood and violence to a “cerebral” or “abstract’ art form in a way that will resonate with the pop culture, and on Twitter.  

In other words, Riggan's magical realism alter ego, a superhero, has allowed him to take dirty reality to a level never before imagined on the stage.

Putting this another way, Thomson realizes he is doomed to disappoint and fail his Broadway critics unless he imports what he learned from his experience as a Hollywood actor; that blood and guts -- the populist stuff -- gets attention, approbation, and funding.

The film’s subtitle comments explicitly on the “Virtue of Ignorance.” This is no accident. 

Thomson can’t play in the world of high culture, or literary culture. He isn't that deep a thinker. He doesn't really get it.

But without understanding that material (the Carver material, specifically), Thomson honors it by making it more real and visceral than anyone would have believed possible or likely.

And let’s face it, Thomson is indeed sort of a pretender. 

He’s famous for playing a superhero, and what’s the reason he picked Carver as his source material for a debut on Broadway? 

Carver, the author of his play, once wrote Riggan an encouraging note about acting on a cocktail napkin. 

This background story is an indication that Thomson is not a deep thinker.  He doesn’t love the work for what it represents, for what it signifies, or means in and of itself. He loves it because of what it means to him, personally.  He possesses the narcissistic attributes, one might conclude, of a Hollywood actor seeking fame and fortune. Carver encouraged him to stay in acting, so now he wants to direct a Carver story.

In the last scene of the film, Thomson flies out of his hospital bed like a real bird man. 

This is not a suicide attempt any more than the action with the gun blowing off his nose was a suicide attempt. 

This is Riggan's apotheosis, his reckoning that he can achieve power and reputation in the high culture by corralling the “gutter” authenticity -- blood and violence -- of the pop culture.  

He will soar to new heights, no doubt, in a resurgent movie career because of the stunts he pulled on Broadway. He has learned, from his opening night antics, that Birdman is not character to keep hidden or locked away, but his muse.  Instead, that muse will keep him connected to the popular culture and the will/desires of the audience.

In other words. Fuck this drawing room play. 

It only becomes real once the coarse emotions, spectacular action, and violence of the pop culture make it “live” for the audience.

The schizophrenic approach to Birdman --- immersive dirty reality/flights of fantasy -- echoes the schizophrenic career of Thomson, and his attempt to reconcile those opposites. 

Instead of being embarrassed by Birdman, superheroes and so forth, Thomson finally permits that anarchic voice loose inside the staid, cerebral world of high culture.

A less judgmental view of Thomson’s odyssey in Birdman might simply involve his technique; his devotion to craft. 

He never nails his role in the Carver play (or his directorship of it) until he grasps the odd fact that the Birdman part of him -- instead of being discouraged or sublimated -- should be allowed to come out and play.  

His path to ‘finding the part’ is by using what he knows. 

And what he knows is, finally, Birdman.

If this is the case, then the film represents a different kind of reckoning, perhaps. And that is simply, that subject matter doesn’t make for pop art or high art. 

Rather it is one’s level of commitment to that subject that matters most.  Thomson proves that he is committed to his role and his play at a perhaps insane level.

There’s a lot going on in Birdman. 

For example, the film boasts another kind of schizophrenia or division. 

On one hand it is about Thomson and his career. But on the other hand it very reflexively seems to involve Michael Keaton and his career choices, as well. 

Is this movie Keaton’s come-back, and reach for high art acceptance? Or is it a cheeky acknowledgement that even on Broadway, you can’t escape your superhero past. 

Birdman veers so wildly between its poles of extreme, immersive dirty reality and flights of fantasy or magical reality that it is bound to confound some audiences, or frustrate those seeking tonal consistency. Yet Birdman’s clashing forms of art are also a fact of life, as Michael Keaton’s involvement testifies.

One day you’re Batman, the next you’re Hamlet, or Willy Loomis.  

The dirty little secret, perhaps, of all good actors is that the experience of playing Willy Loomis and Hamlet not only can inform your turn as Batman.  

Oppositely, Batman can also inform -- can make or break -- your portrayal of Hamlet or Willy Loomis.

If that's really true, says Birdman, then the dichotomy between pop art and high art is finally dead. 

It's all the same thing, and Tabitha Dickson is a lonely voice in the wilderness, arguing for a dead kingdom. 

Popularity, to quote Shiner, is no longer "the slutty little cousin of prestige."