It’s hard to ignore the media and PR hype over Leonardo Di Caprio’s latest movie The Revenant. It’s a movie inspired by the life of Hugh Glass. Note though it’s inspired by, but a good half of the movie is pure fiction.
The critics have been raving about this movie. It’s 83% on Rotten Tomatoes although to be fair I never really trust Rotten Tomatoes. The reviews there in my opinion seem to favor artsy, cutting-edge type of cinema work but sometimes completely forget that movies are supposed to have some entertainment value.
IMDB is a better barometer in my opinion and they rate is 8.3/10. That’s pretty high.
What I thought about the movie?
Well it terms of entertainment value I thought it was okay. I’d give it a 6/10. There were some parts in the movie when I felt bored. Blame it on our instant gratification world of having everything at our fingertips for my short attention span.
However if we take a step back and look at the finer details of it, you’ll appreciate it even more.
- The Way The Scenes Were Shot
The Revenant was directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, the award director behind Birdman. In Birdman, he was famous for making the movie look like one super long shot with one camera. I thought it was cool for the first 5 minutes but I found Birdman a terribly boring movie.
I do however appreciate how The Revenant was shot in very unique ways. For example during battles, instead of the usual Lord of the Rings style battle scenes that depict entire battlefields and the armies coming together, battle scenes in The Revenant is depicted by close up individual skirmishes one by one. I thought that was a really refreshing take.
I also appreciate that they used natural light for almost all their scenes and they didn’t use much CGI.
On IMDB, I found this quote
Alejandro González Iñárritu was insistent that computer-generated imagery not be used to enhance the film, stating: “If we ended up in greenscreen with coffee and everybody having a good time, everybody will be happy, but most likely the film would be a piece of shit.”
Gotta love his candor.
2. The Scenery
The movie was shot mostly in Canada and when they couldn’t finish their shoot before the snow melted in Canada they moved it to South Argentina.
The scenery was breathtaking and I appreciate how the director really focused on that.
3. The Makeup
I don’t want to give away any spoilers here but lets just say the makeup was amazing. And I don’t mean just the “on the face” makeup. I mean everything down to even how a scar looks like.
Last but not least Leonardo Di Caprio’s performance was amazing as it always is.
Overall I think it’s a great movie to watch but rather than just sitting and expecting to have the entertainment value hit you, look out for the little details. At least for me, I found that I learned to appreciate the film a lot more.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space