The Revenant: Iñárritu, DiCaprio

http://www.youtube.com/embed/B3mPXPkiJtk

Wrong link above. Here it is. Like a video-game version of a William T. Vollmann novel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfj1VCg16Y

I am excited this movie is coming out because it means Leo can finally get a decent haircut.

should be good on mute

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoebZZ8K5N0

looks good

of course it looks good

heard a rumor tom hardy punched inarritu in the face on set during filming

wholeheartedly approve if true. am interested in the movie regardless

Mostly/entirely shot with only natural light.

First half of the trailer could be an Electronic Arts preview for a new game.

lots of pouty actors in this

looks like a stupider less fun take on Dead Man

lots of pouty actors in this

A lot to pout about on the frontier!

heard a rumor tom hardy punched inarritu in the face on set during filming

think there was a real attempt at a herzog/kinski type environment for this. by all accounts it was hell.

I'm actually cautiously looking forward to this. Seems like the story/setting might curb Innaritu's worst instincts

heard a rumor tom hardy punched inarritu in the face on set during filming

he deserves the Nobel Prize.

i dont even hate all of that dude's movies (amores perros is still the jam, 21 grams has its moments) but there has not been a single account to suggest he is anything other than a complete pretentious twathammer

Did anyone punch Tom Hardy in the face though?

heard a rumor tom hardy punched inarritu in the face on set during filming

he deserves the Nobel Prize.

I want to enjoy the warm glow of this possible fact before it gets repurposed as For Your Consideration "difficult birth" trivia or whatever.

A lot to pout about on the frontier!

i didnt mean the emotions per se, i meant squinchy-faced lippy actors up to the age of 40

Good reviews overnight from the first screening.

Adam B. Vary
‏@adambvary
Will Poulter says they'd rehearse every detail in scene for in THE REVENANT in the woods, come back a month later, & not remember anything.

DiCaprio diplomatically calls making THE REVENANT "a beautiful blur," & the scramble to shoot in natural light "like an unfunny SNL."

Dicrapio is an unbeautiful blur.

i like the michael hurley song

some of the trailers used this song from last year, really cool piece of modern classical inspired by looming global warming apocalypse :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGva1NVWRXk

like used about 30 seconds of it obv

so David Thomson has flipped for this

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/david-thomson-the-revenant-alejandro-g-inarritu/

“Wilderness” is no longer a romantic word for environmentalists to enthuse over in their drawing rooms. It is the inferno that disdains civilization, and offers “beauty” as a torment to our hopes and vanity.

For anyone who spends much time in wilderness, it is neither of these overheated exaggerations.

Still haven't seen Birdman, and I wasn't sure if I could see a film called The Revenant, which is a shorter title than Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, but probably, maybe, better. If there's a Michael Hurley song, though, maybe.

Just as Iñárritu’s Birdman deconstructs performance, so The Revenant is tense with self-assessment.

I dread the film school essay that will cite this sentence

didn't realize & cant believe this cost $135 mil to make

that's when they give u money to burn, after yr Oscar

He was halfway through shooting this when the Oscars happened, but there hadn't been much snow yet :-(.

“Wilderness” is no longer a romantic word for environmentalists to enthuse over in their drawing rooms. It is the inferno that disdains civilization, and offers “beauty” as a torment to our hopes and vanity.

It's weird that they'd quote Herzog and not cite their source.

For the first hour I was immensely enjoying this, some great cinematography by Lubezki for sure. I am not a fan of Inarritu, but thought I'd give this one a try. For the last hour and a half it is a typical load of Inarritu balls - just overdone yawnsome bombastic bollocks.

I don't get how extended scenes of strained facial expressions make a movie. Yet here you go!

https://41.media.tumblr.com/1e14e54c66adbd981a4f01b7d232d707/tumblr_mi09cxzrHJ1r0btqdo1_500.jpg

Got through to the end, enjoyed thoroughly. the nature alone is worth viewing.

I enjoyed it a lot, but didn't know that much about it - I only saw it as a cheap mystery movie, we were convinced it was going to be Spotlight.

You really feel like you're in Leonardo's bronchial passages, for all the NATURE it's very close in, one neat gimmick with the camera lens in particular. My friend claimed that the lack of space disqualified it as a western.

I made me want to rewatch Ride with the Devil.

You can definitely see a lot of money on film - but some of the cost is they outlasted Canada's snow and moved it to Argentina to finish?

Also regarding the Tom Hardy punching (and general Herzogianism) - apparently Hardy didn't like some of the realism the Iñárritu wanted, so the director let Hardy choke him out - someone took a photo, and that is the cast t-shirt.

iirc The weather in Argentina was also terrible and delayed shooting.

I really despised the trailer - lol @ natural lighting/well shot etc. Pure hammy technocratic nonsense. Lets burn a pile of money instead.

Friend wants to see this so I'll go on about how terrible this is afterwards on here too.

I generally dislike Iñarritu but I thought this was hallucinatory and/or intense.

fisheye lens very much in use

Reading in American Cinematographer magazine how some of their lenses warped due to extreme conditions and some of the resulting shots were kept in because of their unique look. But fisheye wasn't intentional it seems.

Nice Jodorowsky "Holy Mountain" homage early in the film, too.

"lol @ natural lighting/well shot etc. Pure hammy technocratic nonsense. Lets burn a pile of money instead."

yeah how dare anyone admire the technical and aesthetic elements of a film, wtf kind of post is this

apparently xyz just wants people in a room talking, single static cam

I found the 'everything is very clear and possibly something is happening that Leo's face can't see' scenes much more acid-etched than the 'and now, a hallucinatory passage' ones.

i suspect this is thread-relevant

@NickPinkerton Jan 4
Proposed addition to Sarris's The American Cinema categories, to meet the new demands of the 21st century: Messianic Mediocrity.

https://twitter.com/electrolemon/status/684863663010787330

looks pretty but overdramatised story

go for the lulz stay for the cinematography

xp oh my god

surprisingly big 1030 am crowd for this when i just went, its a bit of an arduous watch for an arduous story. does look often gorgeous. leo is always good and hes good here. idk hard for me to get too worked up abt this either +/-

like def is a theme abt as much as nature nearly kills leo, it also provides for him and like not only in obvious ways, a few times hed be dead just if the immed landscape was different idk that stuff was p cool; the revenge thru-line is m/l just to have a plot

I enjoyed this and theres some incredible scenes and breathtaking cinematography but a few Malick-isms cant help to hide the fairly slight story.

I don't think anyone's trying to hide it?

can't help but wish this could have been done by malick or herzog but it was still great

I really enjoyed this

its a great cinematic experience, overblown or not

xxp only if Herzog followed the bear instead.

a bear wd have to force me to see this

Seems like a good date idea

Bear rom com

"a few Malick-isms cant help to hide the fairly slight story."

on the whole you can same the same for Malick.

say the same *

I like the balance of Malick-isms in The Thin Red Line. I seem to enjoy it more every re-watch.

i dont want to get caught in the internet innaritu hate before i even see the film, but this does actually make me want to see it -

http://lwlies.com/articles/alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu-the-revenant-interview/

“I’m not a philosopher, I’m a filmmaker, but I think we have a long way to go before we fully understand the subconscious. The problem with film is that now people view it as an accurate representation of reality. I’m much less interested in reality in cinema than I am exploring the way we truly experience life, which is far away from reality. Reality is really just memories, little slices of sensation that we interpret as accurate versions of an event or moment in time. There’s a lot of things left to explore, and I’m just scratching the surface of the subconscious, of the spirit world. But unfortunately right now I think we’re going in the exact opposite direction.

“The Revenant was a way for me to express an extreme human experience through what I call ‘pure cinema’. It was a huge exercise for me to work out how I could tell this story with as few words as possible, in a very emotional and sensory way. When you strip out dialogue you do so in order to understand your subject – to understand what he’s thinking and feeling and trying to do – and by doing that you’re left with the image, literally to moving images and sounds. You have to go deep to really get to what this guy is about. For me, it was an exercise in molecular storytelling.”

People have been thinking this sorta stuff since 1905. Update your thoughts plz.

sure, but theres some sort of weird backlash between a certain online contingent who think they are just far smarter than this film (which may well be true), and well, everyone else, who might actually be pleased to see a big major release that isnt about superheroes (exaggerated binary there, i know). i mean, i find the self serious pompsity of his films sort of irritating/insufferable, but id prob still rather watch this than knight of cups (if were talking modern malick vs fake malick). also, although i havent truly liked anything he has done since 21 grams (and even then not as much as amores perros), i will probably still check out his films because of those early ones.

Its a rubbish binary. That 'everyone else' doesn't scan - there are big release films that aren't about superheroes.

rubbish, ok, but a popular, enduring binary. i know its bogus, but it also holds true in a sense, that there will always be smaller (hollywood - cos thats what people mean when they have these discussions, they dont care about arthouse releases) movies being made and released, they just dont make quite as much as the more typical modern tentpolers. here are the top ten grossers in the uk of last year -

1 Star Wars: The Force Awakens
2 Spectre
3 Jurassic World
4 Avengers: Age of Ultron
5 Minions
6 Furious 7
7 Inside Out
8 Fifty Shades of Grey
9 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2

apart from minions and inside out and 50 shades, all the rest are franchises. and unless you count 50 shades, none of them are 'serious' or 'adult' dramas. the top ten for 1985 however is somewhat more diverse -

1 Back to the Future
2 Rambo: First Blood Part II
3 Rocky IV
4 The Color Purple
5 Out of Africa
6 Cocoon
7 The Jewel of the Nile
8 Witness
9 The Goonies
10 Spies Like Us

TBH looking at the top ten of any year is never going to really throw up much that isnt a 'big' movie (looking outside the top ten to 11-30 is a better reflection).

ANYWAY, my point is that i doubt this can be as bad as the smarter-than-thou cinephiles want it to be, nor is it likely to be as good as the oscars seem to believe it is. but it is still likely to be better than queen of the desert, herzogs last hollywood movie (im seeing comparisons to werner for this too, cos yknow, its about a man conquering the wild and battling against nature etc etc). make of that what you will.

Not a criticism, but I'm not sure how 50 shades and Minions aren't franchises?

i forgot about minions being a spin off from despicable me. obv 50 shades IS part of a franchise, and an adaptation of a work that is already successful, but i didnt include it as being a franchise as its the start of a new one, rather than just the latest sequel to one already existing. but point taken.

Don't agree with the notion => not as many franchises in the 80s => more diverse.

Not even sure as to the point of the lists. Its gone off this tangent of populist arthouse guy has not v good ideas to...idk what. None of the 80s films were exploring anything too 'out there' (unless you start throwing irony about).

Is the Revenant really going to sell many tkts

Its a rubbish binary. That 'everyone else' doesn't scan - there are big release films that aren't about superheroes.

when i saw hateful 8, nearly every trailer was a franchise superhero movie. i mean "it is not a superhero movie" is hardly praise, but even accepting blockbusters and what they do, there is a truly pathetic level of creativity or daring involved.

and like one superhero per movie is no longer enough, they have to cram a few more in to sate people.

im saying there are two schools of thinking about him/this film, and both seem to inform the press/awards buzz it has gotten so far. im just saying, there is a bit of context to both. its not like innaritu isnt at least TRYING to do something braver than the main of what constitutes big hollywood moviemaking today. not saying he pulls it off, or that he isnt a humourless, pretentious, stiff (this is what bugged me the most about birdman beneath its guise of crazy anything-can-happen-ness) bore, but yknow, he at least has some lofty ideals in mind, regardless of what the results are. i think hes just someone who could 'relax' a little more in his work. he tries too hard to be great all the time.

i hate inarritu but i really enjoyed the hugh glass episode of the dollop should i see this y/n

i dont want to get caught in the internet innaritu hate before i even see the film, but this does actually make me want to see it -

http://lwlies.com/articles/alejandro-gonzalez-inarritu-the-revenant-interview/

“I’m not a philosopher, I’m a filmmaker, but I think we have a long way to go before we fully understand the subconscious. The problem with film is that now people view it as an accurate representation of reality. I’m much less interested in reality in cinema than I am exploring the way we truly experience life, which is far away from reality. Reality is really just memories, little slices of sensation that we interpret as accurate versions of an event or moment in time. There’s a lot of things left to explore, and I’m just scratching the surface of the subconscious, of the spirit world. But unfortunately right now I think we’re going in the exact opposite direction.

“The Revenant was a way for me to express an extreme human experience through what I call ‘pure cinema’. It was a huge exercise for me to work out how I could tell this story with as few words as possible, in a very emotional and sensory way. When you strip out dialogue you do so in order to understand your subject – to understand what he’s thinking and feeling and trying to do – and by doing that you’re left with the image, literally to moving images and sounds. You have to go deep to really get to what this guy is about. For me, it was an exercise in molecular storytelling.”

― StillAdvance, Friday, January 15, 2016 6:40 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

People have been thinking this sorta stuff since 1905. Update your thoughts plz.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, January 15, 2016 7:13 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

True, but it does feel like the current era has a particular stick up its ass about "realism."

yes. hence, godard's pointed, and wholly necessary intro in goodbye to language: "Those lacking imagination take refuge in reality."

“The Revenant was a way for me to express an extreme human experience through what I call ‘pure cinema’.

lmao

When you strip out dialogue you do so in order to understand your subject – to understand what he’s thinking and feeling and trying to do – and by doing that you’re left with the image, literally to moving images and sounds

how did Pabst and Murnau survive without dialogue

yeah this guy is ridiculous

xp

Needs to study more philosophy and psychoanalysis.

Or just read something. Might help.

those paragraphs posted upthread are just embarassing, practically every sentence begs a riposte or a correction.

True, but it does feel like the current era has a particular stick up its ass about "realism."

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Friday, January 15, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't agree w/this. But also I'd add that people don't think in these categories, its much more important they feel entertained, not short-changed and that their time isn't being wasted.

Its a rubbish binary. That 'everyone else' doesn't scan - there are big release films that aren't about superheroes.

when i saw hateful 8, nearly every trailer was a franchise superhero movie. i mean "it is not a superhero movie" is hardly praise, but even accepting blockbusters and what they do, there is a truly pathetic level of creativity or daring involved.

― japanese mage (LocalGarda), Friday, January 15, 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fair enough but I'm sure people might say similar when they went to the cinema in the 80s re: action hero blockbusters when they kicked back to watch Rambo II.

What I'd compare this stuff to is auteur Hollywood like Malick, and compared its severely lacking.

otoh Carol was quite good as a fairly big release.

can definitely see why this against the grain anti-realist approach would appeal to those who might actually be pleased to see a big major release that isnt about superheroes

but the grain in Carol is lovely!

inarritu is just okay; not great, not the worst. so i downloaded this. as with all of his other movies i've seen, it's alright. it entertained me. what i've learnt through my snobby film years is i don't impose on the movie things it doesn't want to be.

sure, inarritu is arrogant in how he decides to express himself, but as someone who also does art, i guess that's how he psyches himself up and inspires himself somehow. i don't really care what he says.

the cinematography is amazing. the story is simplistic, but this is pretty much business as usual for hollywood movies.

likewise, leonardo dicaprio is just okay, as well; not great, not the worst. he has been in better roles.

i'm dubious about the collective conscious people talk about in this thread

so glad the Internet wasn't around in the 70s

This was pretty amazing I thought

Scoff at Innaritu talking about pure cinema all you want but that's kinda exactly what I was thinking when I saw this.

Hardy did sound a bit too much like Yosemite Sam for my liking though

Scoff at Innaritu talking about pure cinema all you want but that's kinda exactly what I was thinking when I saw this.

I agree. Most of the criticisms of this movie here are about Innaritu's pretentious and lofty media statements than anything.

I don't rate Tom Hardy at all tbh. It'd be a even better movie without him tbh.

I'm going to make an epic survival movie about a man sitting with a full bladder for close to three hours. Based on a true story.

I thought this was maybe 50% wannabe Malick (legit Lubezki or no), 20% wannabe Herzog and 30% "The Edge," but it was OK. Sure, I'd prefer people pack seats for "The Assassination of Jesse James" or "Tree of Life," but anything that gets people sitting in near silence for long dialogue-free stretches is OK with me. Looked great. Give the camera operator a raise.

Where the hell did Domhnall Gleeson suddenly come from?

Yeah, he's everywhere at the moment

Where the hell did Domhnall Gleeson suddenly come from?

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, January 17, 2016 4:18 PM

Ireland.

I only just realised he is Brendan Gleeson's kid

Iñárritu da vida, honey
Don't you know that I hate you?

I don't like him either, but I was impressed by how few do-you-see?! moments he stuck in. Just a floating memory wife here and there and the scene in the ghost church. But those are just a couple of seconds. I liked the physicality of the acting, I loved the photography, it never felt particularly aimless to me, even the movie had no real aim. I've got to give credit to the guy for largely not getting in his own way, and I liked that he followed Birdman with a movie that could not possibly have been more different.

Is Inception the only Tom Hardy movie where he makes a point of enunciating?

did see this at the weekend (though was so shattered i fell asleep for some of the beginning so um, might need to watch again to give it a fair shot) BUT what i did see, dicaprio was surprisingly good, not stunning, but a good, robust performance. why do people continue to cast/praise tom hardy? does no one realise he is just terrible in anything where he has to talk? every time he is on screen, he is an irritating distraction, calling unwarranted attention to himself. i just kept looking at him thinking 'oh theres tom hardy fucking ACTING again'.

apart from that, the film is a fairly middle of the road sort of attempt at serious cinema, mainly only on account of its general wordlessness. the cinematography is nice to look at, simply as the settings are remarkable, but i didnt find any of it all that visually notable in the way birdman was. its also just a bit thin in terms of substance, really.

it has a lot of affecting scenes, like dicaprio fighting the bear, and the scene with the horse, but for some reason, maybe as there wasnt enough else happening in those scenes beyond 'this is a man fighting the cold and desperate to stay alive', i found it hard to find them THAT harrowing. stuff like that just made me think that for all innaritu's avowed interest in the subconscious and so on, i dont think hes esp good at getting into his characters. he tends to be more interested in what they do than what they think.

the main thing the film has going for it i think is in giving the native american characters so much screen time and general importance/presence in a way that you just dont get in hollywood cinema (unless you count the exiles, or smoke signs). i long for the day when a film like this will be told from their perspective, without the need for a dicaprio. this i think is the films true asset, and gift, even.

Hardy is all voice in Locke, and it's really quite good.

fair point. i forgot about him in that one.

i still give innaritu some credit for being a big name director committed to challenging his audience, its just a shame he tries a bit too hard to say something important, and his films often seem a bit too self important.

Hardy is all voice in Locke, and it's really quite good.

― AlanSmithee, Monday, 18 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Probably works just as well as a radio play.

Talked my friend out of seeing this after mentioning this stupid interview so I'm not going to see it yay!

Enunciates clearly in Bronson, plus I think they found a loophole for Legend so he can mumble to his heart's content in one of the roles and speak clearly in the other.

I, er, totally didn't spot it was him in this (saw it as a mystery movie) and kept sorting actors I know by pointiness of nose to see which ones fit.

i didnt recognise either, until until he started talking.

thought he was great in The Drop but tbh mumbly was dead-on for the role

why did this movie use the names of real people in a similar situation when all of the details are made up?

i never recognize tom hardy. that's some armie hammer level star power.

why did this movie use the names of real people in a similar situation when all of the details are made up?

SOP in Hollywood, and i often don't care when the film is good (as in Bridge of Spies).

I enjoyed this, and it looks pretty spectacular. I think I also really enjoyed teh Richard Harris version Man In The Wilderness which is based on the same story but more fanciful with John Huston captaining an expedition with a boat on wheels on what appears to be a Lewis & Clarke expedition.

Are they both based on a memoir by Glass or was it a 3rd person narrative? Wondering to what extent the real Glass survived events.
Though looks like Revenant is based on a novel based on the narrative.

lol why all the iñárritu hating

this was a pretty cool film!

was hoping thread would link to cool informative stories abt the cinematography

i googled for cinematography info a couple of weeks ago but couldn't find much except locations and that they had to move it to the tip of argentina or something because it got to warm in canada.

in terms of location, it was filmed at the foot of a mountain range in the canadian rockies. i've actually hiked through parts where this was filmed, bow valley.

the main filming location was basically one of the "entrances" into the rocky mountain range coming from calgary (east side). i went into it coming from the bc side.

(it's as beautiful as it is shown in the film, if you actually questioned it! :))

lol why all the iñárritu hating

Hating on Iñárritu is a way for us to express an extreme human experience through what we call ‘pure ilxor’.

or some of us still haven't gotten over paying money to see Birdman

ilxmensch

Tom Hardy was really funny in LEGEND, even though the movie was overlong and sorta sucked

I thought Tom Cruise was in it?

Lol I think this every time someone mentions that

"pure cinema" is a herzogism btw

not that the term originates with him but he has def used it more than once

When you have a good shite, your body loses 21 grams

A bad shite - just the same!

this is a pretty excellent piece -

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/17/revenant-leonardo-dicaprio-violent-meaningless-glorification-pain?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Close+up+new+-+2+edittable+regions&utm_term=152368&subid=40319&CMP=ema_1046

I wasn’t entertained. Can you tell? I saw it at a press screening two weeks before Christmas when the streets were filled with twinkly fairy lights and I tripped past a Salvation Army band playing Silent Night to spend what felt like several weeks in a dark room waiting – oh dear God, do you wait – for Leo to just get on and hack the other man to death so I could finally go home. A well-oiled publicity machine of the type that fuels an Academy Awards clean sweep has carefully leaked how gruelling the shoot was, how authentically the actors “suffered” in the making. (They got a bit cold, apparently.) And Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography – all shot in just a few hours of natural light each day – really is gorgeous.

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s idea was for it to look as real as possible. Which would have been magnificent if there was something in the way of a story or any meditation on the nature of retribution or anyone – anyone – that you could give one toss about, but there’s not. So the landscape is chilling and the violence is pointless and the whole thing is meaningless. A vacuous revenge tale that is simply pain as spectacle. The Revenant is pain porn.

LOL @ Bradshaw line - can't he go the way of Philip French?

That wasn't a good piece - most films are very well shot. Wants boring stuff like stories and meditations. "Watch it on Netflix" = so I'm saving my £10 - £15, can someone save my 30 secs it took for me to skim and write this post?

The over-heated comparison w/ an Isis torture video was especially crass

Here's some good Lubezki quotes for anyone interested in talking about the movie and how it was made instead of just whining abt lack of plot and how Iñárritu doesn't have the right to have fun with words - think the immersiveness and viscerality is pretty key, I kinda felt the cold in the theater

one thing that we really wanted to do was to immerse the audience in this world, to make a very immersive film where you could almost feel the cold, the weather as you were watching the movie.
...
At one point, with all the sadness of the world we packed the film cameras and sent them back to Hollywood and went with the digital cameras that were truly creating an image that was much more immersive, more visceral, more powerful, more expressive, that allows to shoot more time during the dark days of the winter. Also something that was very important for me was that I didn’t want to have grain between the audience and the characters and the environments of the movie. A lot of the piece talk about graininess as something magical and beautiful and poetic, but to me it almost feels like a curtain between you and the characters that is not allowing you to see this world, but immediately you know it’s a representation so you know that what you’re watching is not real, that it’s a movie, that it’s a representation, that everyone’s pretending to be someone, where the digital cameras even though you’re doing the same, to me it makes it more immediate and more immersive, so again we sent the film back and we went digital.

http://collider.com/emmanuel-lubezki-the-revenant-children-of-men-interview/

For the bear mauling (aided by ILM's CG Judy, nominated for an ASIFA-Hollywood Annie Award), they were inspired by online video footage of a real bear attack at a zoo. "So analyzing that shot, we noticed that the camera is continually shooting with no cuts and it's almost banal. What happens is the bear attacks him and then goes away and looks around. What I love about the scene is that it has that randomness that we found in the real attack. It's a tragedy because the bear is only trying to protect its cubs."

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/how-the-revenant-changed-emmanuel-lubezkis-life-20151211

I think the wide lenses allow you to make the movie very immersive and that was one of our main ideas: to engage the audience in a very immersive way. The movie wanted to be visceral, so it allows us to get very close to the actors but still see the environment surrounding them. They are always connected to the environment. The lens is so wide that I have to be very close to Leo, for example, when I’m shooting a close-up. And the beautiful thing about that is that you can see the breath coming out of his mouth. The breath sometimes even hangs into the lens and distorts the image, but I think in a very poetic way. It’s almost like feeling his life, and you can capture eye movement in a beautiful way because you’re so close. It creates a proximity with the characters that otherwise you don’t have. When you’re shooting with long lenses, even if you’re shooting a close-up, you feel the air, the distance between the camera and the subject. And here, you feel that there is no distance, that the camera is right there, so it adds a psychological dimension.

http://deadline.com/2015/12/emmanuel-chivo-lubezki-revenant-cinematographer-interview-oscars-1201671835/

Trying not to rise to it re: ISIS. How wack tho'.

the isis comparisons are obvious clickbait. but it is true about how hollywood gangsters/violence have influenced a lot of real life criminals, from the krays to jamaican drug gangs, etc etc. the piece doesnt really examine in enough depth the nuances of screen violence, but it is true that the film is basically a glamourisation of macho one-man-against-nature survival, which is always easy to take the piss out of (esp for female journalists).

And something essential for me was every time we shoot violence in film, somehow it gets slightly glamorized. It's very hard to shoot violence and make it feel awful and something we should not engage in.

lol'd at the guardian quote above

but he's actually right. yes, it "looks real", what isn't real is the story/plot line. but i just thought inarritu didn't care. i think i laughed more than a handful of times at the story line. was thinking, "how many buffoons were involved in this movie and nobody has any hiking experience to know the probability of all these things happening and surviving is slim to none".

the most obvious blunder is good god that water must be freezing and leo isn't slightly bit chapped. his biggest struggle is moving his legs forward against the current, because you know, he was injured, lol

yes the makers of this film about a dude getting torn to shreds by a bear and taking zombie terminator revenge will be embarrassed by this glaring lack of hiking verissimilitude

the way the bear attack is portrayed is obviously fake. that he survived a bear attack is more believable

as in, i viewed the bear attack as an obvious exaggeration for the sake of a "movie experience", whereas the rest seemed to stay within the realm of reality, yet it didn't get the details right

i think of "pure cinema" as a psycho-era hitchcock boast

I thought it might also be something Sam Fuller says in Pierrot Le Fou, but no the quote is

Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word . . . emotion.

Googling the term brings up a Wiki page about a Pure Cinema movement dating back to the 1920s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cin%C3%A9ma_pur

Saw this last night and kept thinking about the T-1000 and how I was watching a grade-A popcorn movie. Enjoyed it.

Just one question: Did Leo cry and scream enough to win an Oscar?

I loved the bear attack. The whole thing was up in good quality on youtube a few days ago, if you want to save your time.

Half of Leo's performance in this was a reprise of his foaming at the mouth 'lude meltdown in "Wolf."

Dang so prolly no Oscar then, bummer for him

another Jerry Lewis hommage?

Exactly how much mouth foam does a guy need to spew to win an Oscar around here?

not much i'd say. wouldn't be surprised if they gave it to the poor bastard. or do people actually take the oscars seriously?

Actors sure do!

lol

Leo's OK in the movie, actually. Or at least not bad, especially given it's a mostly physical performance.

lol why all the iñárritu hating

― niels, Thursday, January 21, 2016 1:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Uhh hes fucking gay... thats probably why

This movie is pretty shit tbh

some real bear experts itt, lubezki has talked in interviews about studying a bear-attack video from a zoo as main inspiration for how it was shot, but nevermind just trash this movie

expecting bears to protest at poor authenticity in the film

lol why all the iñárritu hating

― niels, Thursday, January 21, 2016 1:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Its how we roll

watched this in less than ideal circumstances so im not sure if id have been swept up in it or not in a better situation, but i thought it was pretty good. there was one shot in particular, i think the sun through swirling wintery mists with either a slow track or zoom, that went on for quite a while and was quite hypnotic and beautiful. part of me wishes this had gone an even more expressionist kind of route, less realism and more dreamscape.

has this been linked http://soc.org/project/the-revenant-shooting-in-the-elements/ ? great part about the avalanche shot:

One of my favorite shots on the movie was a shot of Glass, discovering that one of his key guys has been shot and killed. He discovers the murder and hears a thunderous roar in the mountains behind him. Glass turns his head and looks up to see an avalanche of snow cascade down the mountain. This visual is stunning on screen and does not employ any CGI. The success of this shot required the camera and Leo to react at the exact moment an avalanche was triggered via dynamite that was dropped from a helicopter. It’s a very emotional moment for Leo and a very technical filmmaking moment that had to be timed perfectly. There is a delay from the dropping of the dynamite until you hear the sound and the avalanche triggering. Scott Robinson, our 1st AD, had to cue Leo perfectly, and I had to be aware of Leo’s actions and timing. This was an amazing shot – but very nerve-wracking, as we only had the one chance to get it right. The result was a perfect blending of everyone. It’s a really great cinematic moment where the acting and technical aspects of filmmaking come together.

Funny cause it could have so easily been achieved with CGI that I'm not sure whether it would have made any difference.

Yeah, seriously. I'm not sure I gave it any thought beyond thinking it was a bit on the nose.

I'm glad they made the filming as grueling and painful as possible

hey, Glass was black in an earlier script.

The subtext revolves around the fact that Glass is an African-American male in the 1820’s West. Basically, the author examines what it means to treat someone with the respect they deserve based on their abilities and aptitudes. Glass is, by far, the most competent of the men in his group, but he is also the best of them by whatever ethical maxim you choose. His treatment in the story is a commentary on meritocracy in general.

I say all this in the removed terminology of “meritocracies and ethical maxims” because I believe this Black List draft leaves its subtext wildly unploughed—as many weeds as fruits spring from this story land. A de facto proof of this is Leo’s casting as Glass. If being an African-American is so unimportant to the story that it only gets made when it is re-written for a White actor, then being an African-American was never important to Glass’ story to begin with.

I will see this film when it comes out in theatres because I want to understand what Inarritu’s draft does to resolve this problem. As we will see in question three a new engine [at minimum] is required for Glass. Many of the plot points in this story hold no water if Glass is white.

https://searchingforcharliekaufman.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/the-revenant/

not the most authoritative, but wiki says "Glass was born c. 1783 in Pennsylvania, to Scots-Irish parents who had immigrated from Ulster in Ireland."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass#Early_life

but yeah i guess with all the liberties they took, might as well make him into a fairy black prince for all i care

also lol

How long exactly? After pilot Sully Sullenberger famously landed a jet in the Hudson River in 2009, Scientific American asked emergency room physician Christopher McStay how long passengers could have survived in the 5 C water.

“Generally, a person can survive in 5 C water for 10, 15 or 20 minutes before the muscles get weak, you lose coordination and strength, which happens because the blood moves away from the extremities and toward the center, or core, of the body,” McStay told the journal.

People with a good deal of body fat may last longer, he said. But DiCaprio is clearly not among them.

http://news.nationalpost.com/health/a-bear-mauling-didnt-kill-leo-dicaprios-the-revenant-character-but-hypothermia-shouldve

Still haven't seen this, but finally got around to The Grey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvkiG3lGuUQ

The Grey>>>The Revenant.

this was excellent, I'm surprised at the backlash here but I guess I should expect it. Also the avalanche: that was one scene that I was almost positive was CGI, wow.

Yes, I also thought it was excellent. The soundtrack was fantastic as well.

"why did this movie use the names of real people in a similar situation when all of the details are made up?"

it's a dramatization and that happens all the time in literature and film? what a dumb question.

I was surprised to learn any of this at all was based on a real person.

This was excellent

No he wouldn't have survived any of it, fuckin congrats.

there are no dumb questions, just dumb Hollywood

Think I'll go see this tonight instead of watching the Oscars.

you can watch the Oscar clips and save ya $15

If you see "The Revenant," you might still have time to catch the last two hours of the Oscars.

did i say this was pretty cool & exciting until leo finally got to the base but became totally dull & pointless after? he got fucked by a bear! and rode an unwise horse off a cliff! and hothed it, and totally froze multiple more times, and ate gross buffalo, and all kinds of crazy shit. after all that, who cares if he gets revenge on mumbles with wolves guy?

lol i knew leo screamed and cried enough to win that sweet sweet oscar

He ate raw liver! He's a vegetarian! If that isn't acting, what is?

he screamed and cried in another language too did you see??

Who was better, like significantly better in a likely role/movie this year tho

The bear.

Ha

I mean, significantly better in a likely role is kind of stacking the deck anyway, this was a likely winner because it's a very much the sort of huffing puffing performance of adversity that the academy tends to award - it's gotten a bit better from the 90s run of Silence of the Lambs / Scent of a Woman / Forrest Gump / Leaving Last Vegas / Shine (though there was definitely a bit of "Beat that!" in Eddie Redmayne's win as Stephen Hawking last year), but there's still a sense of "I want a Oscar - what should be wrong with me?"

Has a director ever won two years in a row before?

Mankiewicz and Ford.

Leo's acting was good when he was rolling around in agony, unable to talk.

Hardy was better in the same movie.

Leo at least had an excuse for his unintelligible mumbling.

it would be cool if there was a video game of this movie.

http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/issue/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/dysentery.jpeg

Seeing this was a much better way to spend 2.5 hrs than any awards show.

Struggling to think of a lower bar tbh

There are a lot of ILM threads that will meet you halfway (and a lot of ILE threads in fairness, and they're less likely to have decent music)

Slightly higher bar: I liked it.
Next rung up: it was worth the $9.50 I paid to see it.
Beyond that, I'm not qualified to say.

I thought it was a great movie.

Yeah, I had no problem with it, it was a great Movie. That is, big screen, spectacle, well-made, had a vision. It just didn't have anything to say, imo, which left it kind of shallow/hollow.

I thought it implied a lot about white settlement in native land

Yeah, that was there, but I didn't get anything deeper from it. That's not what the movie was "about" really, was it? it was about dogged revenge, or toughness or something vague and violent. Like I may have noted, like poor-man's Malick, with the craft and vision but minus the courage of ambiguity/mystery/natural magic or whatever.

Like a malick, u mean

http://i.imgur.com/xeCbQws.jpg

when is he playing Welles

lol gr80 that pic...

leo was good in this and i figured he'd get the oscar. anyway mostly i'm just glad eddie redmayne didn't win. also, Josh in Chicago otm

I thought it implied a lot about white settlement in native land

― akm, Monday, February 29, 2016 11:54 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, that's in the film, but then there's also the Arikara leader who speaks only in exposition, where like 70% of his lines are "Maybe they have Powaqa" or "If we go this way, we might find Powaqa" like his men (or the audience) are too stupid to remember their goal.

I thought the most perplexing stuff was why this hyper-realistic movie of people in the real world doing real historically stuff real-y tossed in those bits of magical realism, of floating wives and ghost kids. Worked in "Tree of Life," but not here.

Kind of happy this didn't win last night. I enjoyed parts of it I guess, but overall it was like if Malick, Tarantino, and Herzog collaborated on a film, but decided to remove any of the mystery, wit, or weirdness of their own work.

otm. Best director I can see, best picture nah.

Rescreening this film after reading the source novel... if you didn't like the movie than do yourself a favor and avoid the book.

Totally forgot I started this thread, but never actually saw the film until tonight. Luckily in 35mm in a theater. Love cold-weather movies in the middle of summer. Thought it was filmed in northern Canada, and actually thought that's where it was set as well--whoops. Totally into it.