Are We All Savages?

I am quite in awe of many elements of The Revenant. The movie has fantastic cinematography, breathtaking locations, great performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Forrest Goodluck, Domnhall Gleeson and more, a now very famous bear scene, and the recreation of a time period to the dirtiest, grittiest detail, all well assembled by the talented hand of Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu. I also noted the inclusion of the First Nations; an ancillary inclusion, but inclusion none the less, something which DiCaprio is now lifting in his award acceptance speeches.

There are, in other words, many things to admire about this film. However, it has left an aftertaste that is feeding a growing discontent with the film in its entirety. The story is based on the pirate, frontiersman, fur trapper and trader Hugh Glass, who died in 1833. Glass is a frontiersman of lore because he was mauled by a bear and left without supplies or weapons by his fellow fur traders, yet he managed –with the help of Native Americans- to make it back to Fort Kiowa, in South Dakota, 200 miles from where he was abandoned. That’s the skeleton of a story that Iñárritu takes and makes into The Revenant, a tale of survival and revenge full of brutality, ruthlessness, viciousness and pain far worse than even the original story ever had. It kind of brings to mind that macho-nostalgia western that is becoming Quentin Tarantino’s specialty. It becomes one of those movies, like Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, that you admire while watching, but never see again, because most people aren’t masochists.

The majestic landscapes and the beautiful winter scenery is interspersed with a man being brutally mauled by a bear until he is left a human rag, leg broken, flesh torn; and then the same character is suffocated, buried alive, falls down cataracts, then off a cliff, shot at, knifed and, well, yes, he survives it all. That’s just one character. More natural beauty and then a blood bath of a battle scene between the fur traders and the Ree People in which a live actor, naked, is dragged through the mud. Another beautiful landscape and a woman is being raped, and so on, throughout the whole movie.

The real Glass lived many years after the bear attack and never took revenge (much less the bloody revenge we see in the movie) on Fitzgerald or the younger man that left him to die. In fact, he continued to work as a trapper and fur trader until many years later he met his death on an expedition, under the attack of the Arikara People once again.

So Iñárritu had to add to the skeleton story, it would seem to justify a lot of the violence, and to bring the audience closer to the frontiersman Glass. This is where he brings in the Native Americans in the form of Glass’s son and wife. The real Hugh Glass apparently had no native son to fuel his revenge, nor any known Native wife to visit him as a ghost. The inclusion of Native Americans is, as I mentioned before, auxiliary to the plot, not the main point at all. The main point seems to be the two white men, the rugged traders, Glass and Fitzgerald, both survivors in the rough frontier days, the latter a man who also stands in for those working-class, oppressed men who get the short end of the stick from the American Government in the form of the Captain of the fort.

 

Forest Goodluck in The Revenant

 Iñárritu is not one for subtle messages, as we know from Babel or even Birdman, so he makes sure the audience knows he’s taking a stand for the Native Americans losing their lands and their lives, being immersed, in the process, in the different squabbles between the Europeans. There is even a sign that reads: “We are all savages” in the movie. But beyond that and because the story focuses on the Glass and Fitzgerald rivalry, it’s not clear what the director actually meant the audience to come away with respect to the First Nations (so maybe that’s why their mention in the acceptance speeches are necessary).

All this may be the reason that The Revenant has gotten such polarized reviews and disparate interpretations about its central point. A writer for the Guardian has called it “meaningless pain porn (…) A vacuous revenge tale that is simply pain as spectacle” much like, this journalist adds, “putting a camera in a cage and then setting a man on fire" and filming it, which is what some terrorist groups have done.  This same writer wonders: “This empty, violent movie will scoop up awards. What does that say about society and our attitude to violence?” That’s pretty much the same perspective that The New York Times film critic has, although for that critic the movie is “An American Foundation Story” (American as in the white, European settlers and frontiersmen, not the Native Americans).

Tom Hardy in The Revenant

On the other hand there are reviews like those of Rolling Stone Magazine, which is all praise for the movie, yet begins by warning: “Note to movie pussies: The Revenant is not for you” (confirming the macho-nostalgia aspect of the film). For that critic, the movie is about surviving nature (not quite sure if he’s considering Native American attacks as part of “Nature”).  This critic adds: “That's the movie. And a visceral punch in the gut it is. You could gripe about the excess of carnage and lack of philosophical substance. But surviving nature is Iñárritu's subject, and he delivers with magisterial brilliance. “

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant

Yes, you can “gripe” about the excess of carnage and lack of philosophical substance and I think the critic, in his praise for the film, hit it right on the nail. This is a movie that deserves to get the Academy Award for Best Cinematography for Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki and maybe even the awards for acting for Tom Hardy and Leo DiCaprio, although they both have tremendous competition in their fields (in particular Leo, because of Eddie Redmayne’s spectacular performance in The Danish Girl), however there is still a group of film lovers that prefer the beauty of the allegory, the things not said or shown directly, but dexterously implied, like that baby carriage bumping down the steps of Odessa.

A Farewell to a Gentleman Actor

Colonel Brandon, the Sheriff of Nottingham, Professor Severus Snape, Hans Gruber. Alan Rickman didn’t just play these characters, he created them.  “Jo” Rowling, as he called the author of the Harry Potter books, is the first to recognize how much Rickman added to Severus Snape, the character he played for so many years in the Harry Potter films. And I believe there will never be a better Sheriff for Robin Hood, nor a better Colonel Brandon to make Mary Anne regain her faith in humanity and all of us Jane Austen readers to wish such a man would come along to save us from despair and disappointment.

Rickman was an artist in every sense of the word. He didn’t begin acting until he was 28 –he was a graphic designer before that- and he didn’t make a film until he was 41. His first film was a very Hollywood action movie, Die Hard, but it was that much better because of his portrayal of Hans Gruber, who went on to be considered among the top movie villains of all time.

 Alan Rickman was also a very good director, directing two great women and friends of his: Emma Thompson in The Winter Guest (1997) and Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos (2014). How much sadder does it feel to see that his art grew and that we know he had so much more to give us!

There are two films that Alan has left behind, which we will see with the same heart break that we saw the films that “outlived” Philip Seymour Hoffman or listen to David Bowie's Blackstar, released just a couple of days before his death. The first is Eye in the Sky, in which he stars alongside Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul, playing Lieutenant General Frank Benson, the man placed as a go-between Mirren's military Colonel and the board of government representatives tasked with the ultimate decision of whether ridding East Africa of some of its most dangerous militants is worth the death an innocent young girl. The second is Alice through the Looking Glass where he voices (with that incredible and inimitable voice of his!) the blue caterpillar.

He has been immortalized by his films, yet we will miss him dearly.

I’ve Seen that Movie Too

Carol feels like an old film. It is set in the America of the late fifties, but that is not what makes it anachronistic, but rather it’s belief that the audiences watching it are stuck in that time period. We're not. Not to say that its a bad film. Carol has a lot going for it, in particular the very detailed and beautiful photography and amazing production and costume design, enhanced by the two gorgeous actresses that play the title roles, Cate Blanchet, as Carol, and Rooney Mara, as Therese, now both candidates for an Academy Award for their performances.

   

Rooney Mara as Therese

The trouble with the movie is that it suffers from what I will call the Brokeback Mountain syndrome, which is that while supposedly addressing the issue of homosexuality through a love affair in a place (Brokeback) or time period (Carol) in which the discrimination against those relationships was extreme, in order to call out that discrimination, it does so almost apologetically, directed at a straight audience, as if it were trying to “sell” the love affair to straight folk. In the process of doing this it sacrifices reality.

Cate Blanchet as Carol

This approach starts with the fact that both films use straight actors to play people of a different sexual orientation. The audience knows this because we live in a world of instant information, so it somehow already detracts from the subversive intent of a film that is trying to show the fluidity of sexuality. Wouldn’t the beautiful Jodie Foster or Portia De Rossi been a better casting choice in Ms. Blanchet’s role? And Rooney Mara could easily have been played by Ellen Paige or even Kristen Stewart, who showed much more realism with a gay role in Clouds of Sils Maria (also about the relationship between an older woman and a young gay woman). They most likely would have brought more realism to the roles but, more than that, isn’t the point to offer these roles to actors that are probably looking to expand the landscape?

This is really an oddity, considering that Carol director, Todd Haynes, is identified with the New Queer Cinema movement. Haynes has addressed sexual identity and societal norms in other of his films, like Far From Heaven, Poison and Safe.

But since gay actors can and do play straight characters, why not have straight actors play gay people, even though, in this case, the gay relationship is at the center of the plot? So, let’s leave that aside. The next faux pas of the movie is the relationship of the main protagonists itself. Does anyone really believe in love at first sight? Is that romantic at all in the twenty-first century? Or are we to assume that this is what happened among gay women in that time period? Watching Carol you can’t help but think: who behaves like that? What adults seriously fall in love at first sight and with literally no context beyond their good looks, they turn their lives inside out. Even if we accept that the sexual magnetism was strong, the movie never really develops anything else. There is never any complexity in the relationship between Carol and Therese. That may have passed muster in those Hollywood films of old that no one (not even back then) really believed, but in the twenty-first century of Supreme Court rulings and a stronger movement towards gender equity, it is hard to swallow.

And while both Ms. Blanchet and Ms. Mara, who have more than proven their value as superb actresses, are good in their roles, there is really nothing that extraordinary about their acting. That is, nothing like how we’ve seen them act before, for example Ms. Blanchet in Elizabeth I or Ms. Mara in Girl With a Dragoon Tattoo. Unless, again as was the case with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback, the award is for acting like a homosexual person in a love relationship.

Finally there is the very contrived plot in this screen adaptation. Carol, played by Ms. Blanchet, is about to lose custody of the child she supposedly loves profoundly, yet when the drunken husband takes away her daughter and threatens to file for full custody, does she follow in another car to make sure her child is all right? Does she call him back to negotiate and get him to come to his senses? Does she even try to see her daughter? No, she picks up her suitcase then gets Therese, the much younger woman she has fallen in love-at-first-sight with, played by Ms. Mara, and goes on a road trip! She’s seen this woman all of two times, one for less than five minutes. So, this is love?

Despite the mink coats and money Carol obviously possesses, the road trip they take is to the worst little towns and motels possible in the Midwest, and in winter! And yet still they somehow manage to get caught on tape in the process. In the end (spoiler alert), Carol cedes custody of the child she loves in exchange for the young woman she barely knows but apparently loves more. Is this really a happy ending?

Could it be that even though the director is gay, he is a man and so this all appears plausible to him? What did the author of the book intend as the happy ending? The book on which Carol is based, “The Price of Salt” by Patricia Highsmith (author of other novels taken to the big screen, like Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, or Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley), may answer some of the questions raised. Ms. Highsmith is rather legendary for having been a person who did not like people much and who, despite being gay herself, discriminated against black people and was outspokenly anti-Semitic. She did not have long term relationships or children, and was described as rather cruel and harsh. An anecdote, it seems she lived with cats and about three hundred snails in her garden in England and once took hundreds of snails in a handbag to a cocktail party saying they were her "companions for the evening".

Most of the audience will know little of this and will remember only Mr. Haynes adaptation, which is, again, captivating in its visual beauty, with its old Hollywood-style actresses in a romance –a gay romance- story with a happy ending. All very straight and acceptable, but not very real.