The Revenant

This movie was goddamn phenomenal (and based on a true story). The shot composition, the landscape, the dialogue (or lack thereof), the way the storyline is pieced together, the actual execution of filming--it's all amazing. Leonardo DeCaprio is amazingly expressive in this movie and his lack of dialogue does not impede on his ability to emote and tell the audience what is going on. I thought if there was going to be one weak performance it would have beenWill Poulter, who is usually cast as the villain in YA movies. He actually played his character phenomenally well. Adding to the amazingness of this movie was the fact that every performance was on point. They were all on target with the tone of the movie; not one of the performances diverted from the vibe everyone else was giving off. Every actor was on it in every scene. This movie did an incredible thing where they pulled all these actors who have had a big few years as side-characters or as co-stars (with the exception of Leo DeCap) and put them all in a parts where each of their talents are exemplified and made into an incredibly compelling performance. It was so breathtaking how brutal this movie actually was as well; the director makes you sit through a whole lot of hard things only to deliver redemption to the audience in the last hour.

The thing about this movie is that no one around me wanted to see it. The two big movies I was gunning to see over the holidays were The Hateful Eight and The Revenant and no one was really as mystified by this movie as I was.  The whole movie is shot on location, mostly in Canada, but also in Argentina, Montana, and Mexico. When the director was confronted about how the filming was a bit miserable his response: the movie would not have been even half as good if they were in front of a cushy green screen! They also only had 90 minutes a day to shoot. So they would spend all day rehearsing and then shoot whatever they were doing in 90 minutes. Basically this movie was great and besides a few weird parts where words didn't line up with mouth movements and how the final decisions of some characters were sketchy, this film was executed with so much meticulous care I am utterly amazed at the outcome.

The bear mauling scene is much longer and much more brutal than advertised. The fact that the scene is around 7-10 minutes and most of it is composed of tracking one-shots contributes to the meticulousness of the whole movie. If my memory serves to be accurate, I believe the scene is one shot total, but there may be up to three cuts during the whole of it. The brutality of the scene stems from the absolute realism of each shot and the bear's natural behavior; the bear goes after him, wanders, goes after him again, wanders and then goes after him a third time.  It attacks DiCaprio, viciously flinging him from one side of the frame to the other The agony Decaprio is experiencing in this scene is felt throughout and the way he is able to communicate his pain without saying essentially anything is incredible.
There were a few tracking shots in the movie, most impressive of which I found to be the opening Native American attack scene which was shot in a way that followed the sequence of action. There's a sequence of events where a guy gets shot with an arrow from a tree then falls and dies in front of Leonardo DeCaprio's character, where then he shoots the guy out of the tree and when the guy falls he falls in the way of a horseman who whacks his head in with a bat-like thing, and then we follow the horseman who kills a few Natives, and then the horseman passes Will Poulter who is being held underwater, and we switch to that event then Tom Hardy save Poulter and brings him on the boat. That is all captured in one tracking shot of the whole attack. It is absolutely amazing to watch how the action is interpreted by the way it is shot. The audience gets the feeling of panic and retreat with the shot tracking all the way to where the colonials get onto their boat and the way the instability of of the camera translates to the instability of the situation.  And there were several scenes like this! It's amazing how much care was put into making some shots feel hectic as all hell and then some shots feel calm but uneasy. Whatever the character is feeling the audience is allowed to experience as well through the tracking shots.
The way you are given background into Hugh Glass' (Leonardo DeCaprio) life prior to trapping I think is so artful and executed with intelligence and grace. There are scenes thrown in throughout the movie that give us insight into the cultural background from which Hugh Glass comes. However, there is hardly any dialogue in the flashbacks and they are rarely chronological, and are largely symbolic; he will hallucinate something that represents his love or the people he was traveling with so that the audience is not blasted in the face with his background. I appreciate this mostly because I hate when movies assume the audience is dumb and tells them everything. I really appreciate a backstory that is up to interpretation or requires some sleuthing from the audience to figure out the significance of what is being shown. A symbolic amalgamation of memories is 10X better than some wimpy backstory told to you word for word and requires no imagination whatsoever. It's so rewarding when directors don't treat audiences like we are clueless.
The scenary was overall beautiful. There was a scene where DeCaprio was walking through a valley between two mountains and the camera went from really high up above the mountains in the air, to panning down to his eye level into the valley. It really just solidified the fact for me that the director was conveying as much brutality as well as amazement in his movie as much as possible. The sheer amount of establishing shots in the movie to show where they are and what kind of predicament they are in will send chills up anyone's spine. If you see this movie the very fist thing you will notice is how goddamn amazing our Earth actually is.
The ending fight sequence is so meticulously put together it was another thing in the movie that just put me on my ass with amazement. It was about 10 minutes long (like the mauling scene) and was composed mostly of long minute-by-minute tracking shots with, again, up to 3-5 cuts, but as I remember, it was one shot through. I was just floored by how the staging and the rotating camera angles blended together so perfectly where I could really only think about how seamless it was and how much rehearsal must have gone into it. I also really appreciated that redemption for Leonardo DeCaprio's character wasn't fully redemptive for the audience. I personally wanted worse things to happen to Tom Hardy's character but I think the way DeCaprio's morals were tied into the resolution was realistic and added to the amazement.

This movie truly is a masterpiece. I have never seen this level of care go into the story telling or the shot composition. Everything was great. I have no complaints other than the messy Native dialogue in some parts and some of the decisions at the end. Everything seems incredibly organic until the ending where some decisions are definitely for the plot to be developed. Every character developed his story to the fullest and even though the plot wasn't that hard to follow, it made it easier to lend your mind to thinking about all the amazing shots throughout the film. This is a movie where people who love well made movies will love it and people who love action movies will love it; a good compromise. The best way to enjoy this movie is to actively think about what you are consuming--think about why the director put things where he put things! It's amazing and will blow your mind out of your skull! Just think about it! It's crazy shit, man!