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.