In the film "The Revenant" Hugh Glass' actual story commentary
Original title: THE REVENANT
Country of production: America
Production Year: 2015
Running time: 157 minutes
Directed: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
This is an Oscar-winning film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, based on the American legend of Hugh Glass.
I think the power of this film goes beyond its strength as a drama and that DiCaprio's fierce tenacity is transferred to his acting.
Here, I have described the message of the film and the historical facts of the real-life Hugh Glass.
Thoughts on The Revenant: The Risen One
1)
Revenant is derived from the noun form of the French word Revenir (return) and is a word that even native speakers are unfamiliar with in the English vocabulary.
However, the English word "REVENANT" means "one who has risen from the dead", which in turn means "spirit", and I think that captures the essence of this film.
2)
When we look at the harsh, vast, barren land depicted in this film, we are reminded that people have managed to sustain life by clinging to nature.
Thousands of people must have been defeated by this harsh nature and rotted on American soil.
3)
The fact that today's America was developed after overcoming the sacrifices of its predecessors is perhaps what the film shows in its melancholy nature.
But at the same time, as I watched this film, I realised that to be allowed to live from nature, we must become respectful to heart and shed our human hubris and arrogance for nature to accept us. I'm beginning to believe that.
4)
This concept is similar to "primitive religion = animism" and speaks to the importance of finding God in all things.
The idea of such animism is that life and death are evident.
I also feel it has a different world from the monotheistic religions of Christianity and Islam", which were born in the harsh, barren nature and desert.
To survive in the desert, you must have intelligence, ability and a strong will to make the impossible possible.
I think it was inevitably a reconstruction of the world in which man was the leading actor, transforming poor nature into an artificially livable world.
5)
However, in areas with more prosperous and varied nature, a deep pocket allows people to live as long as they are obedient and submissive to nature.
The people who lived such "animism" were the Native Americans.
I believe that what destroyed the "nature of America" with which the Native Americans coexisted was the will to change the natural world through human wisdom by the laws of Christian civilisation.
6)
The broken church represents the imperfection of Christianity, and the son Hawk standing there sadly seems to be the message that he is a victim of Western civilisation.
Once again, the desert that gave rise to such a Christian artificial world may seem like the environment in which nature in this film is just as harsh and miserable.
7)
However, when you watch this film's nature, you will feel the brightness and beauty of life in the swaying trees, flowing rivers and the sun setting on the earth.
You will notice that life is flourishing in this bitterly cold, snow-covered land.
It seems to symbolise the protagonist's resurrection from the Christian behavioural principles of Western civilisation, baptised by nature and endowed with Indian animism amid nature's vitality.
8)
I also think the audience following the main character through the film will eventually develop an "animistic" sensibility, believing that nature both takes and gives.
In other words, the main character was killed by the Christian world as a white transplant and resurrected as a spirit with an animistic life, which is why the title of this film is "The Revenant = A Ghost Returned from the Dead".
9)
I can't help but think that the main character is a ghost who has taken over the nature of the American continent and is avenging Western Christian civilisation.
The American bison population was around 60,000,000 before the arrival of the white man, but by 1890, the population had plummeted to less than 1,000.
There is also a theory that there were about 50 million Native Americans (Indians) before Europeans landed in 1492. Still, the current Indian population in the United States has dropped to about 2.28 million (1996 estimate). With the world's population increasing, it is shocking to see a 95% decline rate.
10)
"The Revenant: The Risen" Commentary
The True Story of Hugh Glass
I think Hugh Glass, played by DiCaprio, fundamentally differs from the accurate Hugh Glass.
Hugh Glass (c. 1780 - 1833) was a frontier trapper, fur trader and explorer in the American Wild West.
Born into a Scottish immigrant family in Pennsylvania, he explored the area along the Missouri and Platte Rivers in what is now Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.
His story of being attacked by a grizzly bear, seriously injured, and abandoned by his fellow travellers has been told for many years and published in Man in the Wilderness (1971) and The Revenant (2015). It has been made into a film. (From Wikipedia)
11)
He was forced to become a pirate for two years, then swam off his ship and escaped to Galveston, Texas, and was later captured by the Pawnee Indian tribe, where he lived for several years and married a Pawnee woman.
The story that he lived with the Native Americans appears accurate. Glass is said to have accompanied a Pawnee delegation to a meeting with the US authorities in St. Louis, Missouri 1821.
This may be related to the portrayal of Native Americans as wives in the film.
12)
In 1822, General William Haley Ashley issued a call for 100 men to join an expedition to sail up the Missouri River in pursuit of the fur trade, and Hugh Glass was one of the men who responded.
(However, he is not accompanied by his son, and this part is an invention of the film).
13)
This squad included John S. Fitzgerald (the model for the film's antagonist, Fitzgerald) and Jeff Bridges (presumably the model for the young Bridger who leaves Glass with Fitzgerald in the movie). It will be known as the Ashley Hundred.
At the time, the fur trade was a growing business with huge profits, and Ashley collected an incredible $188 million worth of furs in three years.
In pursuit of such profits, the white settlers are said to have resorted to over-hunting, even if it caused friction with the native people.
14)
The expedition is attacked by Arikara warriors (the battle scene at the beginning of the film: Arikara War of 1823), and Glass is shot in the leg.
It all started when Ashley's party was buying and selling gunpowder and horses in an Arikara village when one of the men killed an Arikara woman after an argument. (Although the film shows it as winter, it was spring by the end of May 1823).
15)
After this battle, the Ashley Hundred returned to Fort Kiowa and counterattacked with 240 US soldiers at Fort Atkinson, reinforced by Fort Lapper and many Sioux Indians in August 1823. Together, they attacked the Arikara tribe.
After the battle, one of the Arikara leaders was killed, peace was negotiated, and the Arikara abandoned their village.
The following day, the village was burned to the ground by the US military.
The 14-man party, led by Andrew Henry, then moved overland to the headwaters of the Yellowstone River.
16)
Glass, who joined Henry's party, was hunting near a tributary of the Grand River in Perkins County in August 1823 when he came upon a grizzly bear with two cubs and was attacked.
He was seriously injured, but fortunately, with the help of members of his hunting party, he could defeat the bear and save his life.
However, the group had been travelling with Glass for two days and was significantly slowed down.
Henry, the leader, saw Glass take his last breath and asked for two people to bury him, and John S. Fitzgerald and a man later known as "Bridges" stepped forward.
17)
Fitzgerald and "Bridges" waited five days, then left with Glass's rifle, knife and belongings, and when they caught up with the party, they falsely claimed that Glass was dead.
Later, the two men were attacked by the Arikara tribe and made the excuse that they had no choice but to leave Glass behind.
(Considering the hostile relationship with the Arikara tribe, this excuse doesn't seem like a complete lie; as shown in the film, they would have been attacked had they been discovered).
18)
When Glass regained consciousness, he travelled 200 miles (320 km) to Fort Kiowa on the Missouri River without his weapon or travelling gear, with one of his legs broken and a wound so deep that his ribs were visible.
Glass replanted his leg bones, covered his body with bearskins left behind by his companions, and dared maggots to eat his rotting flesh to prevent his wounds from becoming gangrenous.
Throughout the six-week journey, he survived by eating whatever he could find, including wild fruit, roots, insects and dead animals.
On another occasion, he robbed two wolves that had killed a bison calf and ate its raw meat.
Using it as a guide, he followed Thunder Butte Mountain and arrived at the burned-out village of Arikara in late September, where he found corn.
19)
While in the village, he was discovered by the local Sioux tribe and taken to a Sioux village where he was cared for and nursed back to health.
With the Sioux's help, Glass could raft down the river and return to Fort Kiowa on October 8, 1823.
Three days after arriving at Fort Kiowa, he participated in a trading trip with the Mandelein tribe. Still, within a few days, he was attacked by the Arikara tribe, and only Glass and one other man survived under the protection of the Mandelein tribe.
Grass was famous in Indian society as a hero who could defeat the grizzly bear and not be killed by the Arikara, and it is said that the Mandelein tribe welcomed him and didn't let him travel until November.
Grass finally left the village, slept in a snow cave, and travelled on foot through the deep snow without a reliable map for a month, watching for Arikara attacks in the snow.
20)
He arrived at Fort Henry in the second week of December 1823, where Captain Henry and his troops were supposed to be.
However, the fort was an empty shell, and a note was left saying that a new defence had been moved up the Bighorn River.
Glass sets off again and arrives at the new Fort Henry at the end of December, where Glass discovers "Bridges".
But, as in the film, Glass forgives the young man.
He then re-enlisted in Ashley's hunting party, and on March 27 1824, Henry sent him and four others to St. Louis, where Ashley was.
On the way, the Arikara tribe attacked them, and two were killed. There was a newspaper report that Glass was also killed.
21)
Glass then learns that Fitzgerald has joined the US Army, stationed at Fort Atkinson in Nebraska.
He follows Fitzgerald to visit the army at the end of June 1824.
Glass tells the captain at Fort Atkinson that he intends to kill Fitzgerald.
However, Captain Bennett Reilly, the captain of the party, tells Glass that if he kills him, he will arrest Glass and hang him.
He tells Glass that the military will execute Glass if he kills a US soldier.
22)
Captain Reilly, seeing that Glass had given up on the murder, confronted the two men and forced Glass to return the Hawken rifle that Fitzgerald had stolen.
Glass reportedly warned Fitzgerald to stay in the military and not go out.
According to one theory, Glass was paid $300 at the time.
Glass returns to his life as a trapper after meeting the two people who left him behind.
23)
But again, in 1825, a Shoshone arrow in the Rocky Mountains shot him in the back, and he had to travel 700 miles by river to save his life.
Finally, in 1833, he was ambushed by the Arikara tribe on the Yellowstone River and disappeared.
24)
A few days later, Glass's friends saw Glass's body parts being held by members of the Arikara tribe, and it's believed that Glass was killed by his long-time sworn enemies, the Arikara tribe.
America in the 1800s was a brutal world full of danger, where you never knew when or where you might die.
Speaking of the 1800s, it was around the time that Napoleon died in France, the Kyoho Reforms were progressing in Japan, and around the time that Watt invented the steam engine in England, but even in that world situation, America's level of uncivilisation was different from the colonial era. I think it stands out because of the confusion.
25)
The film differs from reality in the following ways:
Hugh Glass had no children, and Fitzgerald killed no children.
(In the movie, the child is killed by Fitzgerald).
The bear attack happened in August, so it was summer.
(In the film, it is a bitterly cold country in the middle of winter.)
The Sioux rescued him for a long time.
(In the film, he survived almost alone.)
He did not take revenge on Fitzgerald.
(In the film, he has a bloody fight with Fitzgerald.)
Considering why these differences have arisen, everything is moving toward strengthening the "drama = conflict structure."
26)
However, suppose the theme of the conflict between nature and man and Western civilisation and the destruction of nature I mentioned in my impressions was to be portrayed. In that case, I don't think performing the hatred of man so excessively was necessary.
In the end, this film has only one purpose.
No matter the original story or the film's theme, I felt the main focus was making Leonardo DiCaprio stand out more than necessary.
27)
DiCaprio is excessive, painful, heartbreaking, harsh, on the edge of his limits, and even hints of madness. DiCaprio's performance in this film is overflowing with the actor's ferocious tenacity born of his crazy passion for Oscar.
In the film" "The Revenant, HugGlass's' actual story commentary/impressions, commentary, meaning, and historical facts
https://www.reviewanrose.tokyo/article/451556361.html
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"The Revenant: The Risen O" e" Triple Academy Award Winner Movie
https://www.reviewanrose.tokyo/article/451436139.html
"The revenant" - In One who has returned, as if from the dead.
The Revenant - IMDb
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1663202/
