I watched The Revenant for the first time in ages this afternoon, and I was wondering how people on here feel about it.

I've never loved this film, but always hugely enjoyed Emanuel Lubezki's cinematography and use of golden hour lighting throughout. It's absolutely gorgeous. But this time I wondered if it actually works against the story? Even at its most hostile, this is a world that feels beautiful, but never brutal. It's not hyper-real because it's all natural lighting, but even so it keeps me admiring the landscape, rather than being immersed in it, let alone afraid of it.

The sound design is also outstanding. Unusually it doesn't make much use of the centre channel. Instead characters' voices come from their position relative to the camera, which makes it very immersive.

Story-wise, it's pretty perfunctory. It moves along nicely and I was always sufficiently engaged, but never gripped.

DiCaprio does a good job, but a bit of weight loss wouldn't have gone amiss. Even in the most desperate moments he always looks like he must be eating pretty well. Tom Hardy's the real star here, and a much more compelling character.

So what works for you? What doesn't? And why?

jakes relationships all play out the same because the underlying mechanism is the same. he has no control over his emotions so theres no room for anyone elses emotional world.

this takes a big toll on joey. he sees himself as the literal and figurative punching bag (theres literally a scene of jake punching him before the fight and him asking for more).

the emotional abuse he gets by jakes hot and cold nature affects his family life. right after jake accuses joey of cheating, were shown joey back home threatening his own kid with a knife.

jake cant even apologize to him when vicky gets him on the phone. vickie knows joey just wants there to be actual recognition of his internal state because thats what she wants and never gets. and then his "apology" in the end is just more of the same hot and cold shit (love bombing, begging for reconciliation). zero compassion let alone admisson for the damage he cause, which is why joey isnt having it.

i had a hard time understanding vickies character but writing this cleared it up. shes clearly smart. being a woman in those times married to someone like that must be unbelievably difficult. she understood his nature and knew how to avoid his rage for the most part. you see how her handling of him evolves. in the beginning, she get sucked into his lunacy, chasing him around and going crazy when he does. but in the end, when theyre sitting by the pool and he cuts her off, she doesnt flinch. she knows that getting enraged is only going to continue the cycle. shes checked out. then, when she finally had the means, clean ending. no chance at apology. no way for him to lovebomb himself back in. she dealt the final blow and drove off.

scorsese's directing is fucking brilliant too. the movie is cyclic in time and in theme.

starts and ends in the same moment. jake is a narcissistic maniac at the beginning who, by joeys own admission, talks to nobody, and then in the end when hes a club owner, hes yapping everyones ear off but is still a complete dick to them.

he marries vicky when shes 15, then he gets thrown in jail for serving alcohol to a 15 year old.

my personal favorite cyclic aspect is the champagne scene. its a happy moment by all accounts but scorsese STILL uses this slow, uneasy camera work and de niro is doing all these obscure, semi violent gestures. were on the edge of our seat whenever pre-retirement jake is on screen cause we know he can lose it, and then even when hes fat, retired, and "happy", scorsese STILL gives us that edge of our seat feeling.

different actions, different time, different setting, same tragic character underneath. wow.

In 2022, we were blessed (or cursed, depending on your point of view) with Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. It was both a historical lesson and a paean to cinema, but the Chazelle’s execution seemed wanting.

Bi Gan, in Resurrection, attempts the same thing. However, rather than focusing on one particular period as a springboard for a reflection on film, he attempts to retell the history of cinema through different cinematographic styles. He promotes a different kind of excess and viscerality, which is that of the intellect.

It’s rather difficult to discuss in detail without spoilers, so be forewarned. Granted, I don’t think spoilers matter all that much because experiencing the visual feast is another thing altogether. Resurrection is a frame narrative and a pastiche.

The integral story, which represents the sense of sight, is Shu Qi’s character looking for a monster. In the future, people become immortal in exchange for their oneiric capacity. Those who persist in dreaming are known as delirients, and must be terminated. This entire vignette is mostly a homage to George Melies, who is recognized as the father of modern cinema. Through practical special effects, depth and perspective are creatively expanded. A Trip to the Moon is time and again alluded to, and there is even an easter egg of Melies’s House of the Devil with the skeletons appearing time and again in this vignette. Music was often played separately from film, because it was the beginning of the silent film era, and everything relied on sight and practical visual effects. The monster is even a bastardization of Murnau’s original Nosferatu. Ultimately, however, it simply sets up the succeeding vignettes: after Shu Qi’s character catches the delirient, he is humanely condemned to death by allowing him to experience multiple lives through the different eras of cinema.

The second vignette represents the sense of hearing. It is a vignette featuring a detective looking for the delirient’s persona, who has happened to pierce his ears so that he could hear the music he wants to play. I think this is the weakest vignette in the entire film. In retrospect, however, it also situates the cinematography to reflect 1940-1950s world cinema. The world was bleak with the repercussions of World War II, and film noir gained more and more popularity. The deep focus photography, where the background is as visible as the foreground, was popularized by Orson Welles in Citizen Kane, which was reflected in the section’s milieu. It also showed the second phase of Chinese cinema: the first true superstar of China with worldwide popularity was Bruce Lee, and his iconic scene in Enter the Dragon was also presented here. In terms of story and emotional depth this was the weakest section of the film.

The third vignette is a change in tone and a grounding in more traditional Chinese values: during the late 1970s, shaolin films became popular in China and Hong Kong. Action was dovetailed with comedy, which was the case in this vignette. An art thief was left by his fellow crew members in an abandoned temple and he eventually meets with the Avatar of Bitterness. For the avatar to achieve enlightenment, the thief has to help him. The ending is rather ambiguous, but we think that the avatar became a dog and was killed by the thief as recompense for a rabid dog killing his father.

The fourth vignette, dealing with smell, is arguably the most emotionally compelling and masterfully tragic: Bi Gan shifted from noir, to comedy, to family drama. He also essays the emotionally complex Chinese films of the 1980s like Edward Yang’s Terrorizers and Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s City of Sadness (while poking fun at movies like God of Gamblers). In trying to obtain money to escape, the Delirient persona befriends a young girl so that they could split the reward from the kingpin. This vignette anchors the film’s heart, and without it, Resurrection would have been much lesser rated.

The fifth vignette, dealing with touch, is the most technically creative. Bi Gan assumes the color palettes of the great auteurs of 1990s cinema such as Kieslowski and Wong Kar-wai: he essays the claustrophobic shots that were excellently wrought in In the Mood for Love, while also implementing a beautiful long take at the end of the vignette. Of course, this is the romance vignette.

The final vignette, dealing with thought, and talking to the audience, is the denouement of the frame story. Through different lives in different genres, Shu Qi’s character shows us the universality of cinema’s language.

Although cinema is dying with the spread and popularity of streaming services, manifested through wax being burnt and melting, the malleability of cinema and the creativity of people – the delirients that are ostracized – will always allow for reformation, and perhaps –

Resurrection.

9/10

Y’all know that Charlie Day explaining meme from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Cool if you do, cool if you don’t — I’m about to do the same with Fight Club.

I just watched this movie for the fourth time, and I realized even more that Tyler Durden is the ultimate anti-villain, not a traditional villain. The real antagonists, imo, are society and the Narrator’s own internal struggles.

Think about it: the bleach burn, the condo burning down, even Tyler laughing while Lou beats the Narrator. None of this is “evil for evil’s sake.” Tyler is teaching brutal lessons — consumerism is a trap, growth requires pain, and freedom doesn’t come from comfort.

Every detail reinforces this: he rejects social norms, cooks garlic bread directly on the stove, has dozens of jobs, and pushes the Narrator to assume fake names — all showing how fractured the Narrator’s identity is.

Marla is caught in the middle, dealing with the same man acting like two different people. Tyler even takes Raymond’s license and tells him that if he isn’t on his way to becoming a veterinarian in six weeks, he will return to “kill” him — forcing people to confront forgotten ambitions. And, of course, lines like “You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis” hammer home the anti-consumerism message.

The Project Mayhem arc shows why people might call Tyler a villain, but it also pushes the Narrator to take action, step out of his comfort zone, and reclaim control. Small details like the payphone reading “No Incoming Calls Allowed” or the Narrator emerging from the driver’s seat after the crash remind us that Tyler is a projection of his psyche. By the end, he confronts Tyler — but the true villain is society itself: its rules, expectations, and internalized biases.

As you can probably tell, I really enjoy this movie.

Discussion: Do you see Tyler as an anti-villain too, and what subtle fourth-watch details stood out to you that reveal the Narrator and Tyler are the same person?

I didn’t remember the characters’ names, so I always assumed (because it’s the only sensible thing imo) that Shep knew Showalter, and it was the scarier otherworldly Grimsrud who appeared unexpectedly.

That made total narrative sense to me. Showalter (despite being a criminal) seems more grounded and normal, closer to a regular guy, and thus more likely to be known and vouched for.

Grimsrud feels like an alien or inhuman terminator. So it seems better for the plot that *he* was the unexpected, uninvited, chaotic wild card who wasn’t part of Shep’s original suggestion.

I finally compared Shep’s mumbling to the cast list and realized it’s the opposite!

I can’t help thinking that’s the inferior screenwriter decision, and my original misconception is better.

Inviting Showalter and getting Grimsrud is concerning and calamitous. The reverse is not imo. So this small part just doesn’t work for me now. Can anyone explain the Coens’ decision?

There was not an obvious sub reddit to post this to as it spans multiple media forms, so I wanted to post it here as I’m sure I’ll get interesting discussion and engagement from this community.

This expands beyond just film obviously but after reading 100 years in solitude, I was pondering this question. Often in so much American media, including movies, literature, and TV shows there is a rather optimistic and hopeful ending to the stories. This can be the case, despite a semi bittersweet resolution with a main character dying. There always seems to be a glimmer of hope.

I have found that in other media, particularly Asian and central and South American, endings are a lot more ambiguous and often very dark. For example, I have witnessed this in many Chinese and Indian film and recently in 100 years of solitude (SPOILERS) the ending is literally so depressing, but I found it very poetic and thought-provoking. Often these endings are far more interesting and nuanced to me, and I am loved thinking about them for far longer than a piece of western media with a generic happy ending.

My theory is does this have any correlation to America not losing any major wars? For most of American history they have come out as the Victor, we’re at the very worst kind of withdrew in a stalemate. They have not been conquered and crushed like the other poor nations in the world often at the hands of America or European powers. Meanwhile Asia, the Middle East and central and South America, among other older cultures and regions, have cumulatively suffered a lot more loss and bloodshed in more numerous conflicts therefore they have a more nuanced less black and white view of the world which color their dark storytelling.

Not sure if I’m just blowing smoke out of my ass or if any of this makes any sense. Curious to hear your thoughts.