Alejandro González Iñárritu’s previous film, Birdman, was certainly one of the most memorable and definitely the most unique film I watched in 2015. For anyone who hasn’t watched the film, it is shot and edited to appear as a single, near 2 hour continuous shot (with the exception of a single sequence). Whilst this felt slightly disorientating at times, it certainly gave the film a unique look. But behind the stylish look of the film lay an interesting story covering themes around acting and reality, and a host of fantastic performances led by Michael Keaton. So his follow up, The Revenant, certainly had a lot to live up to.
Sadly my overall impression of the film was that this was a case where Iñárritu, reputation enhanced and with a bigger budget to play with, wanted to showcase what a great director he is, and at times this is to the detriment of the film itself. The main issue I had with the film was the pacing. One question you can ask of any scene in any film is “How does this specific scene advance the story?” If the answer is “It doesn’t”, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but in The Revenant it is clear that many such scenes are a deliberate choice from the director in order to create a slow burn. A slow burn is not necessarily a problem either, as long as the film is filled with tension, but I never felt that tension here. Whilst there are a few unexpected turns involving minor characters, the main story of Glass’ quest for revenge against Fitzgerald followed the exact path I expected it to.
One of my biggest issues in the film was the use of the long, continuous shots. Birdman was interesting because the concept was carried throughout the entire film. That isn’t the case here, but almost every scene contains a long, continuous shot. After a while, I found that a little bit gimmicky. It didn’t add to the tension of the scene, and the power the continuous shot can have was lost. One of my favourite uses of a continuous shot is towards the end of The Avengers. So much of the shot is CGI, but the shot has a great impact because it is probably 3 or 4 times longer than the next longest shot in the movie. Here, because the effect is used so often, shots which could otherwise have proved incredibly memorable all blend into one. Don’t get me wrong, The Revenant certainly isn’t a bad film. It is a very good one. The lighting is absolutely fantastic, and I also thought the sound was very good too. But it is definitely one which could have been shorter, and the visual style was a missed opportunity for me.
I want to finish by talking about the performances, in particular Leonardo DiCaprio’s. It is certainly a strong performance in the sense that he conveys powerfully what is driving his character through the numerous troubles he encounters. But the character doesn’t have a lot of depth. None of the characters do. Nobody does anything surprising to the extent that you wonder whether you might have misjudged their character. So from that perspective, it would be ironic if this was the performance that finally wins DiCaprio his Academy Award, because if you compare it to his performance in The Wolf of Wall Street, there is so much more going on with Jordan Belfort than there is here.
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