‘The Revenant’ Re-Release Is a Potent Reminder of What Hollywood Has Lost in the Past Decade

One need hardly look long and hard to find statistical evidence that Hollywood is presently in deep trouble. But here’s something that should raise eyebrows in Los Angeles’ entertainment circles.Last weekend Alejandro González Iñárritu’s acclaimed 2015 19th-century drama “The Revenant,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio in a performance that would go on to land him a Best Actor Oscar, was domestically re-released in 200 IMAX cinemas. According to the website Box Office Mojo, “The Revenant” grossed $189,892, more than double the money made by much-hyped comedic action-drama “One Battle After Another,” Mr. DiCaprio’s most recent film. (The screen average of “The Revenant” was $949, compared with $144 for “One Battle After Another.”)Of course one needs to add the qualifier that “One Battle After Another” is now in its 23rd week of release. But Paul Thomas Anderson’s film continues to generate much attention for its ongoing sweep on the awards circuit; in just over two weeks’ time, according to the Hollywood Reporter’s renowned Oscar predictor Scott Feingold, the film is the favourite to win Oscars for Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Sean Penn, Best Director for Mr. Anderson and Best Adapted Screenplay, and is one of the front-runners to win Best Picture.While “One Battle After Another”s total box office gross of $72 million is commendable at a time when original films struggle to get seen, it pales in comparison to “The Revenant” which made $183 million a decade ago and further illustrates how audience curiosity to see Oscar contenders is at an all-time low. Appropriately, given that “The Revenant” features multiple scenes of characters suffering from starvation, the fact that more people should choose last weekend to see a Mr. DiCaprio film from 2015 than flock to his latest offering offers plenty of food for thought.Set in 1823, “The Revenant” is an atmospheric study of survival and revenge. Mr. DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a fur trapper making his way through the mountainous Old West, driven to avenge the death of his son. In the course of “The Revenant’s” 156-minute running time, Glass is partially interred, flees down a waterfall to escape Native American tormentors, cuts open the insides of a dead horse to stay warm in artic conditions, and in the film’s most celebrated scene nearly gets killed when he is mauled by a grizzly bear.In the intervening decade since its release, it is tempting to think Hollywood has suffered even more than the protagonist of “The Revenant.” 20th Century Fox, the studio that made “The Revenant”, was subsumed by Disney two years after its release and is now a shadow of its former self; many high-profile actors continue to be decimated by becoming embroiled in divisive culture wars; and the rise of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime has diminished the cinemagoing experience and seemingly induced apathy in audiences.Yet amidst all this tumult, Mr. DiCaprio bravely soldiers on, continuing to specialize in playing men in the mire staying alive only through hope and determination. Ironically, for a man who is a committed environmental activist, away from his pictures, Mr. DiCaprio is drawn to playing roles whose desperate plight serves as anything but a compelling advertisement for living on planet earth.In “The Revenant”, he is supported by fine performances from fellow members of his animal trapper team including Tom Hardy as his nemesis Fitzgerald, Will Poulter as young mountain man Bridger and Domhnall Gleeson as the hunters’ boss, Captain Henry. The actors collectively elevate a mediocre script into a brilliantly-crafted mediation on resilience and retribution, with Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography rendered all the more glorious by being bestowed the IMAX treatment for its re-release.For my money, “The Revenant” illustrates the themes of masculine catharsis and family relations in far superior fashion to the cartoonish and rambling, though widely-praised, “One Battle After Another.””The Revenant” was a throwback to 1970s “Great Outdoors” epics such as “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972) and “Man in the Wilderness” (1971) which was also loosely based on the travails of Hugh Glass.Despite the huge commercial and critical success, “The Revenant” did not inspire a spawn of imitator films in its wake. The word “revenant” means a person who has returned from the dead, so it is most welcome to see this film come back from the cinematic wilderness which it has inhabited this past decade since its release. For all the current sound and fury surrounding overrated and underwhelming “Battles,” should Hollywood opt to make more films in the vein of “The Revenant”, it may yet end up winning the cultural war.

‘The Revenant’ Re-Release Is a Potent Reminder of What Hollywood Has Lost in the Past Decade

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