The Revenant

I was waiting for something in the style of the Black Robe in combination with McCarthy's Bloody Meridian and in a way I got it. Sadly, there was a lot of kind of mystically symbolic insertions that were frequent, pointless and above all unintentionally stupid. It would have been even better if it had kept only in the department of inhospitable wilderness, pragmatic rough trappers, Indians on the warpath, survival, endless snowy distances, howling winds, slow pace. Although it undoubtedly has a few weak or unnecessary scenes, but when it's good (which is true for most of the footage), it's damn good. Largely thanks to the raw atmosphere, poor performance of lame Leo, amazing (however traditional) grumbling Hardy and even Gleeson is surprisingly a great fit. And we need to mention the camera since there has not been anything better since There Will Be Blood. Overall, I really enjoyed it, although I had considerable reservations. (01/13/2016)

One hundred and fifty minutes of art that offers real physical adventure in only two battles. There's clearly something wrong with a film where you spend most of the runtime thinking about the freezing crew on the other side of the camera. I haven't seen something so "wanted" in a long time. Just hand over the coveted statue and let this one fall in as technically honest and damn difficult filmmaking, which perhaps nobody even cares about in the end. PS: Hardy beats DiCaprio by a dead bear and half a horse. (01/02/2016)

As long as during the first 30 minutes we capture the amazing promo reel of Lubezki's camera, which equilibristically flows through the space between panoramic and contact shots, it's captivating. But then comes the need to tell a story and work with the characters, and the master of shallowness Alejandro is suddenly back with everything that it encompasses. The means of storytelling diverts attention from what is told to us. The film has an incredibly-compiled screenplay full of coincidences, which is supposed to be based on ultra-realism, but in fact is constantly slipping out of it towards an attempt at a metaphysical anti-western. The symbolic plane, the game with landscape and flashy symbols, is so superficial and clueless that it’s shameful. Although Leo breathes like a frightened mule and practices the crawling lessons he learned in The Wolf of Wall Street, he basically has no acting to do (I was almost sorry for him during the scene in the ruined temple). The film becomes a superficial high school exercise in Jack London's tenacity, which, thanks to a number of physical details, unfortunately grows into a parody of itself - Glass is Iron Man between trappers and Meresiev of the 19th century. It is not a celebration of the tenacity of man, but of the superfluous ego of a creator who puts himself above the story and the character as a dubious god. Revenant is a rare spectacle, an intellectual exploitation and a film that brings nothing more than magnificent filming of landscapes and action. Otherwise, it's a boring camping guide and a college of starting fires. Where there is nothing, not even the tinder burns. Metaphysics for the poor from the grizzly among the overrated filmmakers. P.S. The bear takes it all, the best CGI scene ever. [50%] (01/05/2016)

Revenant is undoubtedly a great movie. It has genius camera, brutally frozen locations, two absolutely perfect scenes and Leonardo DiCaprio, whose performance is an acting orgasm like never before. If not before, then for this performance he simply has to get the Oscar award. Personally, I think that his showing off is beyond the line. The less talking there is, the more action is happening on the screen. Leo is gutting a horse to hide in his internals or eating raw meat to survive. Plus, he survives a lot ofunbelievable stuff that no average citizen of the Czech Republic would be able to survive. All of that for the most classic reason of all – for revenge. It’s a shame that the creators stretched the story so much. They could’ve spared us some of the flashbacks. Two and a half hours is a lot of time for a story like that. Anyway, I admit that the first scene of the attack of the Native Americans and then the scene of the bear attacking Leo will stick in my memory as the best I’ve seen in a pretty long time. (01/19/2016)

Leo will finally get his Oscar. And not because he turned in a better performance than in The Wolf of Wall Street, but because of how much he had to suffer for it. Such a large-scale and, thanks to its locations and weather, true survival movie with a stellar cast and cinematography by Lubezki does not need a thicker plot. IT IS ENOUGH THAT IT EXISTS. Just like it is enough for the Eiffel Tower to just stand there. Because for several decades there will be no other filmmaking project of similar proportions. The funny thing is that The Revenant’s lack of a denser story is criticized by the same viewers who repeatedly went to see the over-filtered Mad Max: Fury Road, in which there is not a single real exterior and someone drives a car through the desert for two hours only to decide to turn around just before reaching their destination. The story of The Revenant is a continual struggle for survival. The betrayal of a friend, meeting a Native American with a bleeding heart, helping the defenseless innocent. And the consequences of all of this. Fate and our ability to influence it. Karma. And for us contemporaries, also the realization that while we hope to have a good time, people before us hoped to survive. Every day. The Revenant’s poetic passages are not pseudo-art; they are art for masses, similar to those of Ridley’s Gladiator, just less cheesy, because Iñárritu expects some development from the mass audience over a decade. Alejandro, it’s incredible what you’re willing to do (and risk) to shoot the hitherto unseen. Chivo, you are a god. Amazing sound and makeup. By comparison, Alive and The Edge become mere snowflakes in The Revenant, flying in the wind of Dances with Wolves. Thank you, cinematography, once again after a long time. This is what I live for. (01/17/2016)