At
the brink of survival in the natural world, how close is man to nature? In The Revenant, Alejandro Inarritu suggests
that the closer man is to nature and accepts it, the less he is in a state of
nature, and the more noble and moral he becomes; conversely, the more man uses
nature for profit or power, distances himself from it, the more he remains in a
state of nature, driven by fear and hungry greed. The underlying view, contrasting
noble savage and corrupt modern man, is not particularly original in Western thought.
It is, however, particularly well expressed in film in The Revenant, which rather
than lecturing it to us makes us feel it.
The
main reason for this should be clear to anyone who is familiar with the history
of cinema: the film is clearly indebted to the style of the director who best
captured the organic quality of nature as part of the human experience: Andrei
Tarkovsky. Indeed, someone has already noted how scenes from a series of
Tarkovsky films were used as templates for scenes in this film,[i] and
Inarritu himself has declared him to be an influence.[ii] In
Tarkovsky, however, nature plays a different role: Humans are no longer near a
state of nature, but are cultural beings who dream and search for meaning, and nature
is a gateway to an inner, even spiritual space (in Solaris, even an explicit projection of an inner world[iii]).
A similar role can be found in Terrence Malick, for whom to contemplate nature serves
as insight to a spiritual world, but with his own particular style, more air
than water, the camera floating in yearning rather than gliding in nostalgia
(see particularly New World).[iv]
In
the Revenant, in contrast, nature rules over everything, harsh and raw rather
than spiritual, still resisting human intervention; it is more the nature of Werner
Herzog than of Tarkovsky or Malick. And even the characters to whom the film is
most sympathetic – e.g. the protagonist and the Pawnee – are barely more than natural
beings, either struggling against other humans and the harshness of nature, or passively
floating with the current (like in Aguirre[v]). This
‘barely more than natural’, however, is intensely human: not quite spiritual,
but with a simple nobility and morality of bonding with others – of love and
loyalty to kin, friend, and stranger in need – and the revenge driving the protagonist
stems from this basic morality.
Disappointingly,
the film does not have the moral complexity of Inarritu’s 21 grams, instead careening
single-mindedly to the protagonist’s aim, his haggard face finally evoking another
ordeal-film (Klimov’s Come and See[vi]):
the face of someone who can find neither solace nor closure, empty of purpose beyond
revenge. It can be equally unsatisfying to those seeking emotional vindication
and those seeking philosophical insight. But, in this, it is much like real
life; and that is a precious quality.
