The Revenant

As you may recall, I am a major US Wild West history junkie.  Always have been.  When your early years are filled with elderly people whom fought in the Indian Wars, chased Poncho Villa around Mexico and Texas, and knew the tails of those whom had come before - it is so terribly hard not be be touched by those tales!  I love elderly people!

So, I was in grade four, in northeastern France and I found a book about Hugh Glass on my monthly journey to the local NATO library some seventy miles away.   I guess I thought the book was about glass ...  Instead it was a semi-riveting book about the fur trader Hugh Glass.  Don't worry, by seeing the movie - The Revenant, you still will not know anything about Hugh Glass.

So, some Hollywood types are kicked back on a business trip to old Mexico trying to come up with an idea for a movie.  Toking away at their Peyote, while passing the pipe, one of them comments they ought to redo Jeremiah Johnston ...  Stoned out of their heads, they hammer out the main portion of the proposed movie ...

Oh make no mistake, this film is not about Hugh Glass but rather about some stoner trapped in the wilds of the old west on a really bad trip!  You will get what I mean once you have seen the movie.

Okay, Leonardo's butt is there for your pleasure.  We have an aborted rape scene, a man with his jewels cut off by the rape victim, a frontal nudity of a skinny man and more brutality than occurred across the entire history of the old west, all in two hours of film!  Of course we have to denigrate the French as well and as for the "savages", well they are after-all, savages!  Oh, how high do  you like your Pawnee's strung up?  I blame Tarantino for the presentation  style and content here ....

The locations are spectacular.  I have been to most of them and really enjoyed knowing I had waded that river, peed behind that rock, yodeled in that canyon!  I am sure that Leonardo has done the same so I will now have to go back and re-stake my territory!

Acting is quite good given that the writers were most likely on drugs and had no idea what they were doing.

Clothing was a bit hit or miss.  The 1820's are not well documented in that regard - were it the 1840's then I would be beyond critical!

Language was unfortunately not historical and could have been filmed with Chris Rock or Richard Pryor at their worst.

Story line ... again no mindset of what the early west was, nor the fur trade, save for watching old John Wayne or Charlton Heston movies.  And from an Indian viewpoint, oh heavens!  We have the Cree, the Arikara and Pawnees referred to ... they probably ought to go for a group action lawsuit!  And then everyone can turn on the French and get them to pay retribution to the tribes!  Or maybe everyone with the last name of Glass could sue the estate of the long dead Jim Bridger ... LOL

In reality, the movie's storyline took place across three months time, Hugh forgave Bridger when he caught him, he demanded his rifle back from Fitzgerald - but did not kill Fitzgerald as he was in the American Army, with a high penalty for killing soldiers, and sadly Hugh only lived 9 more years after this story took place.  The Arikara got  him in the end.

My suggestion is that this is an exciting movie.  It shows how someone can be turned into a sociopath (Glass) and a psychopath (Fitzgerald).  But, it is not something I would take a teen to see, nor a female I respected.  And the real story is is far less exciting but just as riveting ...  If you love history find a copy of "Lord Grizzly" by Frederick Manfred, 1954 instead, and a large cup of some good tea.  Worked for me in grade four ....