THE REVENANT (US/Hong Kong/Taiwan - 2015) Directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu. Written by Mark L. Smith and Alejandro G. Inarritu. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck, Paul Anderson, Lukas Haas, Kristoffer Joner, Joshua Burge, Arthur Redcloud, Duane Edward, Brendan Fletcher, Melaw Nakehk'o, Fabrice Adde, Grace Dove. (R, 156 mins) Following his Oscar-winning BIRDMAN, Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Inarritu (AMORES PERROS) goes full Werner Herzog-meets-Terrence Malick with the unflinchingly brutal and extremely visceral revenge saga THE REVENANT. Based in part on a 2002 novel by Michael Punke, a fictionalized chronicle of famed 19th century trapper/explorer Hugh Glass, THE REVENANT is a semi-remake of the 1971 film MAN IN THE WILDERNESS, where "Zach Bass" was portrayed by Richard Harris during his post-MAN CALLED HORSE period of rugged, violent outdoor adventures. Inarritu constructs THE REVENANT as an homage chiefly to Herzog--with its location shooting in distant and difficult terrains of Canada and Argentina, relying on natural lighting and benefiting from the director's refusal to use greenscreen--but also to Malick, with its long takes of vast wilderness and nature shots with voiceover as Glass, played here by Leonardo DiCaprio, reflects and drifts in and out of consciousness. Exposed to the elements and turning in the most physically demanding performance of his career, DiCaprio is up to the challenges of what's essentially Inarritu's period-setting take on a muddy, bloody, snowy, and slushy survivalist thriller, and while there's a lot of contemplative, dreamlike artistry to establish cineaste cred and to draw comparisons to Malick's THE NEW WORLD, it's also get plenty of harrowing action and a strong narrative to make it accessible to mainstream audiences.
According to legend, Glass was hired as a guide for a group of trappers and frontiersman exploring the vast Louisiana Purchase area in 1823, and after being mauled by a bear, two men in the expedition were left behind to bury Glass when he died. The two men left him to die, taking his guns and equipment with them. Glass survived and traveled 200 miles with serious injuries and on a broken leg, crawling almost the entire way, to find the men and retrieve his belongings. Inarritu and co-writer Mark L. Smith (who's scripted mostly horror movies like VACANCY, Joe Dante's THE HOLE, and the upcoming American remake of MARTYRS) stick to that same basic story, but add a human element to Glass' quest for vengeance in the form of Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), his half-Indian teenage son with his late Pawnee wife. Glass is hired as a guide by a military exploration outfit headed by Capt. Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), who's brought along various mercenary frontiersman and fur trappers who make their living selling pelts. Over 30 of the 40 men in the expedition are killed in a battle with a ferocious Ree tribe, which forces the survivors to send their boat downriver as a decoy and travel the long journey back to the camp on foot if they have any chance of survival. Henry places his trust in Glass, who brought Hawk along, the two knowing the area better than anyone else. That doesn't settle well with Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), an unscrupulous trapper and scalping survivor more concerned with his take on the pelt sales than with everyone's safety. The bigoted Fitzgerald also doesn't like having "half-breed" Hawk along and openly taunts Glass about his dead wife and questions his loyalty to white men. After Glass is viciously mauled by a bear and clings to life, Henry takes all but two of the men back to camp, leaving Fitzgerald and young, inexperienced Bridger (Will Poulter) behind with Hawk to bury Glass when he eventually dies, with orders to bring Hawk back with them to the camp. While Bridger is getting water from the river and Hawk is elsewhere, Fitzgerald convinces Glass to allow him to put him out of his misery, and as he's suffocating him, Hawk returns and attacks Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald barely tries to explain the circumstances, instead quickly opting to stab the boy to death as an immobile Glass watches helplessly. Disposing of the body and lying to the returning Bridger about the Ree tribe being nearby, Fitzgerald half-buries Glass alive and intimidates Bridger into going along with it.
Of course, Glass survives, a revenant returning from the "dead," so to speak. With open, festering wounds covering his body, he slowly regains his strength on his arduous journey back to Henry's camp to make Fitzgerald pay, facing the incredibly harsh elements, a group of French trappers who have abducted a young Ree woman (Melaw Nakahk'o), and the enraged Ree tribe led by Hikuc (Arthur Redcloud), the young woman's Chief father who will stop at nothing to find her. Inarritu channels Herzog's AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and FITZCARRALDO in his depiction of Glass' single-minded pursuit (also, to an extent, Nicolas Winding Refn's brilliant 2011 minimalist Viking saga VALHALLA RISING). Glass' obsessive quest for revenge gives him strength and is as blood-soaked as any splatter film, with hacked off limbs, bleeding wounds, bitten-off appendages, scalpings, castration, and Glass using gun powder to cauterize a neck wound. The stunning cinematography by frequent Malick collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki (often utilizing the kind of long takes reminiscent of his work on Alfonso Cuaron's CHILDREN OF MEN), Ryuichi Sakamoto's score, and the intricately detailed production design by the great Jack Fisk (an Oscar-nominee for Paul Thomas Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD and another go-to guy for Malick) combine with Inarritu's vision to create an incredibly rough and unforgiving landscape that vividly captures the merciless nature and the arduous toil of frontier life. Glass' contemplations of his late wife and his thoughts as he traverses the land of the living and the dead in fittingly mythic death-and-rebirth fashion often play as voiceover (and sometimes subtitled, as he speaks Pawnee) and are pretty blatant in their Malick worship, but THE REVENANT is a perfectly-balanced fusion of the arthouse and the commercial. A constantly grunting, wheezing DiCaprio, aided by some gruesomely realistic wound makeup, throws himself into the role with such a committed fervor that it's easy to overlook how great Hardy is here as well, playing one of the most despicably self-serving bastards to come down the pike in some time. In the end, it's little more than a high-end revenge story, but done with artistry and ambition by a genuine auteur at the top of his game.
BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) (US - 2014) Directed by Alejandro G. Inarritu. Written by Alejandro G. Inarritu, Nicolas Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr, and Armando Bo. Cast: Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Edward Norton, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Shamos, Merritt Wever, Clark Middleton, Damian Young, Bill Camp, Benjamin Kanes. (R, 119 mins)
Though it was conceived by AMORES PERROS and 21 GRAMS director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and three collaborating screenwriters, the surreal dark comedy BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) could easily be interpreted as a soul-baring confessional for Michael Keaton and an analytical walk through his career. Both Inarritu and Keaton say that the film wasn't written specifically for Keaton, but after seeing BIRDMAN, it's impossible to picture anyone else starring in it. So many elements of Keaton's career and the public's perception of him--as well as the image of one co-star in particular--are woven into the fabric of the story that in many ways, you could argue that this is Keaton's ALL THAT JAZZ...minus, of course, the production numbers and the general theme of substance-abetted self-destruction. Both BIRDMAN and the 1979 Bob Fosse classic have a past-his-prime figure (actor in BIRDMAN, director in JAZZ) laying it all on the line for a production that's a culmination of his life's work, a vindication of his existence, a middle-finger response to those critics and contemporaries who doubted and dismissed him.
Similar to Keaton turning down $15 million for a third BATMAN movie in 1995, his Riggan Thomson is a faded Hollywood celebrity who gave up a huge payday 20 years earlier when he walked away from the superhero franchise BIRDMAN. His Hollywood career never regained momentum, and now, Riggan is orchestrating what he believes will be his ultimate achievement, one that finally validates him as a serious artist. He's mounting a stage production of the Raymond Carver short story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." He's the writer, director, star, and financier, and it's not going well. He's run through his fortune to the point where he has to remortgage his home in Malibu that's supposed to belong to his recovering junkie daughter Sam (Emma Stone), and the other male lead (Jeremy Shamos) is such a terrible actor that Riggan may or may not have arranged for a stage light to fall directly on his head. The play's female lead Lesley (Naomi Watts), given her big break by Riggan, suggests her boyfriend Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) step into the vacated role. Shiner is a Broadway actor of repute, and his involvement immediately boosts ticket sales and garners more publicity, which gives the notoriously volatile Shiner enough ammo to start questioning Riggan's writing and directing decisions and trying to take more artistic control over the development of his character and the staging of the play itself (as far back as AMERICAN HISTORY X, Norton has been an infamously pushy control freak, undermining directors, writers, and co-stars, and is a remarkably good sport in the way he allows Inarritu to lampoon that reputation here). Riggan is tortured by self-doubt over this project, with Shiner's constant meddling, his manager/lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis) fretting over the money, and the probable pregnancy of his girlfriend/co-star Laura (Andrea Riseborough), and when alone, demonstrates magical, telekinetic powers and is both bolstered and harangued by the deep, forceful voice of Birdman. Riggan's grip on reality is slipping with each passing day as opening night approaches, and it's not helped by a bitter, spiteful Broadway critic (Lindsay Duncan) who has vowed to destroy him and everything he represents about celebrity culture.
BIRDMAN is often bilious in its tone, as Inarritu takes aim at vacuous celebrities, the fleeting nature of fame, pretentious actors, critics more interested in tearing someone down rather than attempting to understand their art, and a public that judges the worth of something by how much it's trending on social media. Even Keaton approaches it in a self-aware, self-deprecating manner (while destroying his dressing room, Riggan rants about how he's gotten old, wrinkled, flabby, and balding, screaming "You look like a turkey with leukemia!" at the mirror). In a lot of ways, it's the NETWORK of backstage dramas, but above all that, it's a career-defining validation of Michael Keaton, one of the busiest actors of the '80s and early '90s who never really went away, but just didn't seem to be working as much as he should be, or on projects that really showcased his talent. From his first moments on the big screen in Ron Howard's NIGHT SHIFT back in 1982, it was obvious that Keaton was a star. But in walking away from BATMAN FOREVER because he thought the script was terrible and didn't want to do it without Tim Burton, he chose integrity over money, and the momentum was never the same. He never became a pariah, but at the same time, Hollywood never seemed sure of him after that. Though he had some hits (1993's MY LIFE, 1996's MULTIPLICITY) and shined in ensemble pieces (1997's JACKIE BROWN), Keaton stepped back after 1998's JACK FROST and worked very sparingly throughout the next decade, with a Golden Globe-nominated performance in the 2002 HBO film LIVE FROM BAGHDAD, a couple of straight-to-video titles and a minor hit with the 2005 horror film WHITE NOISE. To a certain demographic, he's probably best known as the voice of Chick Hicks in the CARS franchise, but in recent years, Keaton has focused on smaller films like 2006's Don DeLillo-scripted GAME 6 and his own little-seen 2008 directing effort THE MERRY GENTLEMAN, while popping up in things like 2005's HERBIE: FULLY LOADED or this year's ROBOCOP remake and NEED FOR SPEED when he has a need for money. It was probably Keaton's scene-stealing supporting turn in the 2010 Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg comedy THE OTHER GUYS, as a beleaguered, TLC-referencing police captain forced to take a second job at Bed Bath & Beyond because he "has a kid at NYU who wants to explore his bisexuality and become a DJ," that reminded audiences of just how funny he could be. But he's a terrific serious actor as well, even though that's mostly been demonstrated by his playing villains in 1990's PACIFIC HEIGHTS and 1998's DESPERATE MEASURES. Compared to the height of his 1980s fame, the now-63-year-old Keaton was pretty much off the radar pre-BIRDMAN, but perhaps he's always been the kind of actor who wouldn't be fully appreciated until he was older. Make no mistake: this is the role of Keaton's career.
It's impossible to discuss all of the ALL THAT JAZZ parallels without going into spoilers, but a major example is the way both films take frequent leaves from reality: BIRDMAN with Riggan's telekinetic and increasingly destructive powers, and his conversations with his younger self in the Birdman costume (played by uncredited Benjamin Kanes) who eggs him on with either encouragement or scorn; and ALL THAT JAZZ's booze-addled, pill-popping Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) and his conversations with an angel (Jessica Lange) who's alternately sympathetic and derisively mocking. Riggan and Gideon are men pushing themselves to the brink, cognizant of their failures both professional and personal, both men are on friendly terms with ex-wives they treated badly but who knew the kind of man they were marrying, and both try to salvage relationships with their daughters and their current girlfriends. Both will stop at nothing to prove something to...themselves? It costs Joe Gideon his life in a way that questions just how much of ALL THAT JAZZ was supposed to be really happening, and by the end, that comparison comes into play with BIRDMAN. It's a strange, funny, angry, and dreamlike film, shot by the great cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (CHILDREN OF MEN, THE TREE OF LIFE, and an Oscar winner for his work on GRAVITY) in a way that deceptively makes the entire two-hour film play like one continuous take. Inarritu doesn't spotlight the gimmickry or the trickery that goes along in maintaining the illusion, but in coupling it with a persistent jazz drumming score, there's an uneasy tension that grows throttling as the film--and Riggan Thomsen himself--careen toward their destiny. BIRDMAN isn't for everyone, but any fan of Michael Keaton must consider it a must-see as he delivers one of the great film performances in recent years.
