The Revenant Trio Prove Themselves the Benchmark in Collaborative Filmmaking
The Revenant is many things. It is an intoxicating and yet exhausting journey into the heart of both man and the wilderness, and it is a film that had an enormously successful award season.
On the biggest night on the award season calendar, it failed to take home Best Picture, but while that may or may not answer the question of whether it truly was 2015's best film, it certainly boasts the greatest collaboration to come of the past 12 months, and includes the duo that dominated the same Academy Awards night a year ago.
From six nominations over a long period of remarkable performances, Leonardo DiCaprio's victory could be considered one for them all, and arguably his turn in The Revenant isn't his greatest, even if it is his most dedicated. His acceptance of the award said it all. The crowd cheered louder than it had for anybody else. His smile was one of complete understanding and awareness. Maybe he cared about his Oscar drought, maybe he didn't. But at least that elephant has left the room.
It's probably not worth the hyperbole to proclaim that he and Alejandro G. Inarritu's collaboration was a match made in heaven, and the gritty nature of their teaming doesn't quite lend itself to that fairytale caption. Nevertheless, Inarritu a year ago was awarded Best Director and Birdman received the Best Picture Oscar. If there was a man who'd earned a break, it's him. But The Revenant almost called to him. He described the process as a death and rebirth of sorts. Now, he is afforded the title of back-to-back Best Director, joining John Ford (1940-41) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1949-50) as the only directors to do so. Did the film's marketing campaign hinge on the horror production of the film? Absolutely. Did it influence the film's award season success? Hopefully not, but it certainly didn't hinder it.
But rounding out the trio is Emmanuel Lubezki, the cinematographer who captured a film in such raw landscapes using only natural light, and creating a visual feast of both beauty and horror, transforming viewers into the very setting we'd rather veer away from. But it's world is enthralling. Two years ago, Lubezki won Best Cinematography for Gravity, a haunting fable of outer space survival, the polar opposite of The Revenant but in many ways a bizarre, distant relative; Man's battle when faced with nature that is far more powerful than ones self. In between the two victories, he won the same award for Birdman last year, a much, much different kind of story. Today, he becomes the only Cinematographer to ever win three in a row.
While the outside two are open, far-reaching and seemingly never-ending, Lubezki and Inarritu created an almost claustrophobic setting for themselves, confining an entire two-hour film to the backstage of a theater, only venturing outside twice, and the entirety of Birdman is edited to appear as one long take. It proves that Lubezki as a talent is multi-faceted, capable of learning and developing and creating something incredible with little or lots, facing the differing challenges of either. The same compliments can be made of Inarritu and DiCaprio, who both, along with the remaining cast and crew of The Revenant, ventured out into the unknown in order to tell a very natural tale, a basic one that's near on been abandoned until now.
Perhaps its plot failed it, leaving nothing to be desired to anybody but the powers that be, and there were films far more engrossing. As we see a heavy reliance on difficult, and often factual, material being given the spotlight on the big screen, the survival epic feels almost foreign, aged but clearly not dead. Ultimately, film is what we make of it, and opinion is what drives life itself, let alone the conversations we can endlessly engage in.
Comparisons aren't worth it. Nothing compares to The Revenant. Lubezki has three Oscars in a row. Inarritu has two. DiCaprio has finally broken through, and has one to his name. It's beyond exciting to consider what's next for the three of them, particularly if any of them team up yet again.
