"The Revenant" is Amazing, Beautiful, and Shouldn't Be Missed

    

It's a new year full of new movies to see and this year I'm starting off with a bang! This weekend marks the opening of "The Revenant". the new film by Academy Award winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu, one of my new favorite directors! It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy and it's a fantastic film, a true piece of art. I've talked a lot on this blog about the lack of originality in Hollywood, and I wouldn't be alone in that argument. Though the true story of "The Revenant" isn't necessarily original, the execution and production of this film surely is. Iñárritu blew me away with his last film "Birdman", shooting as if in one long take. "The Revenant" is a relentless, intense, emotional, and stunning film to behold.

   Leonardo DiCaprio plays a frontiersman named Hugh Glass on a fur trading expedition in the 1820s. The film chronicles his quest for survival after being brutally mauled by a bear and being left for dead by his men. The movie is loosely based on the true account of Hugh Glass and its execution will leave you speechless. In a nutshell, there really isn't much to be seen by way of story. It's "Cast Away" in the frozen wilderness of uncharted America with a sense of revenge tacked on to it. But it's DiCaprio and Tom Hardy's performances - who is brilliant in this piece as the antagonist John Fitzgerald - that raises this movie a truly compelling and visceral level. No spoilers here, but their confrontation is absolutely jarring. Not as jarring, however, as what I'm sure will probably be known as one of the most amazing sequences ever shot, that being the scene where Glass gets mauled by a bear. I was in utter shock watching this scene play out. It was so real, so frightening, and so messed up that I couldn't blink when watching. Truly brilliant. Masterfully done.

   As I said before, this movie is stunning to behold. I read somewhere that even though the movie took 80 days to shoot, those 80 days were spread out over nine months because of Iñárritu's ambitious attempt to utilize only natural lighting for the film in order to give it that deeper level of realism. That's right folks, no artificial lighting was used in the making of this film, so weather conditions would often only allow them a couple of hours to shoot in a day. That's originality, and that's the type of ambitious filmmaking we don't see very often. This movie is so much more than a movie, it's a beautiful piece of art that needs to be seen on the big screen The acting is fantastic, the story is simple yet compelling, but the production is absolutely astounding. Go see this movie. Brace yourselves for what will be an intense ride the whole way through. Leo better get an Oscar for this role, I mean, what does a guy have to do to win an Oscar?!


But if he doesn't get it, the bear totally should.