{"id":1077,"date":"2016-01-16T11:37:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T11:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html"},"modified":"2016-01-16T11:37:00","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T11:37:00","slug":"so-i-saw-the-revenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html","title":{"rendered":"So I saw The Revenant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/div>\n

Speaking of the Dying West.\u00a0 I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.\u00a0 My wife and I settled into the multiplex, with a tub of popcorn that, if it had water instead of\u00a0popcorn,\u00a0could have sported a diving board, and watched to see what the hype was all about. <\/p>\n

For me, what it lacked in depth it made up for in animal guts.\u00a0 Basically it was \u2018see what you have to do to survive in the wilderness using realistic gore\u2019 mixed with a little tale of vengeance tossed into the mix.\u00a0 Well, a lot of vengeance.\u00a0 That\u2019s what the story is all about.\u00a0 Leonardo DiCaprio is defying death in order to\u00a0hunt down those who did him dirty and left him to die.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s basically Dances With Wolves<\/em> meets Gladiator<\/em>, with Tom Hardy\u2019s Fitzgerald channeling Sgt. Barnes from Platoon<\/em>.\u00a0 As one fellow said as we left the movie theater, they just don\u2019t have original ideas anymore.\u00a0 And they don\u2019t it would seem.\u00a0 There were few scenes where, as they were being set up, I couldn\u2019t guess what was going to happen next.\u00a0 A couple, like the bear attack, I knew from the commercials. But many I could guess because, well, I\u2019ve seen them a thousand times. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong.\u00a0 Leonardo and Hardy, and most of the cast FWIW, did a splendid job.\u00a0 I was particularly taken by DiCaprio\u2019s performance.\u00a0 He really did melt into the part.\u00a0 And the scenery?\u00a0 Woof.\u00a0 I have this sudden urge to sell everything and move to Montana.\u00a0 It was real scenery, too.\u00a0 No CGI.\u00a0 Though there were a few scenes that were spliced with scenery from other areas of the world to give it umph.\u00a0 As if the Canadian Rockies aren\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

But creative or original?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Not really.\u00a0 Early on,\u00a0apart from a few minor details I more or less figured out what was going to happen and how it was going to go down.\u00a0 The first part was a bit confusing.\u00a0 It took me about a half hour into it to figure out who was who.\u00a0 But past that, yeah, pretty much been there, done that.\u00a0 Some of it seemed as though a longer cut of the film had to be whittled down, because in a couple cases, there were scenes that more or less left you hanging or wondering what happened or how did these people get over there.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

But it\u2019s big, it\u2019s sweeping, it\u2019s DiCaprio eating animal guts with a scruffy beard, so it should do well at the Oscars.\u00a0 Especially because it takes as almost axiomatic an important concept that underlies what I\u2019ve been posting about today: The Americans?\u00a0 They\u2019re the baddies.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Remember Dances With Wolves<\/em>?\u00a0 That was quite a stunner back in the day.\u00a0 Not that Hollywood hadn\u2019t already been exploring the idea that Indians may have been the awesome ones after all.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

But DWW did so with so much aplomb, it was so brazen, that many took notice.\u00a0 I mean, except for Costner, was there any American who wasn\u2019t a boorish, crude, rude, evil, murderous barbarian with stringy hair and bad teeth*?\u00a0 By comparison,\u00a0the Indians looked like they had been given a six month membership to a fitness center and a Hollywood makeover spa.\u00a0 The fact that the Indian culture was all but worshipped, and the Americans portrayed worse than Indians in a 1930s John Ford movie, was quite a shock in the day.<\/p>\n

But today, by\u00a0the time of The Revenant<\/em>,\u00a0it\u2019s simply the case.\u00a0 It\u2019s assumed.\u00a0 It\u2019s not even a big deal. \u00a0The assumption is that America was a racist, slave owning, imperialist, genocidal nation akin to the Nazis more than a freedom loving Enlightenment experiment.\u00a0 We\u2019re the bad guys.\u00a0 The settlers are not heroes.\u00a0 They\u2019re the bad guys.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s a fact.\u00a0 It\u2019s not even focused on at this point.\u00a0 True, in the movie, the Indians actually come off as rather two dimensional.\u00a0 They ride about, killing any white man who gets in their way, leaning on the \u2018you did it to us, so we\u2019re going to do it to you\u2019 reasoning of Sonny Corleone.\u00a0 But they are more noble, and in no way inferior to the settlers and trappers who, almost to a man, make the English in Braveheart<\/em> seem kind and thoughtful by comparison.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I think of that, and I think of an observation my son made when we went back to Williamsburg a year or so ago.\u00a0 We had visited Williamsburg a couple times way back in the late 90s and 01.\u00a0 We loved it.\u00a0 But owing to life and finances,\u00a0it had been a while, and we promised our oldest we would go back before he graduated.\u00a0 So we went.\u00a0 Talk about changes.\u00a0 I won\u2019t go into all of them.\u00a0 But one of the things we noticed was how much of the historical reenactments now were centered around slavery and sexism and persecution.\u00a0 They were there when we first visited, but now they seemed the focus.\u00a0The emphasis was on slavery, slavery, persecution of Indians, slavery, sexism, slavery.\u00a0 My son quipped, after going through a house in which all that was talked about was slavery, rather than the actual house, that he wondered how they had time to fight a revolution, what with all the time it took to beat salves, oppress women, and kill Indians. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve often said that Western Civilization will be the first civilization in history to die from suicide; suicide brought about by disproportionate levels of guilt and irredeemable regret over its selective past.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

*It\u2019s worth noting a couple things about DWW.\u00a0 First, not all Indians (like descendants of the Pawnee) were thrilled with the God-like portrayal of the Sioux nation.\u00a0 Many came out and said that to them, the Sioux were every bit as militaristic and imperialist as the Americans.\u00a0 Also, the Extended Cut that was shown in Europe actually had a couple deleted scenes that showed the Indians in a darker light, and actually had a non-Keven Costner American come off as not evil.\u00a0 That was the Lieutenant Elgin, the commander who captures Costner at the end of the film.\u00a0 True, he muses about how awesome the Indians are and how it would be nice to live with them (being a proud American does not make one a good guy in that film).\u00a0 But at least he\u2019s not entirely evil while simultaneously being not Kevin Costner.\u00a0 <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of the Dying West.\u00a0 I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.\u00a0 My wife and I settled into the multiplex, with a tub of popcorn that, if it had water instead of\u00a0popcorn,\u00a0could have sported a diving board, and watched to see what the hype […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSo I saw The Revenant<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Speaking of the Dying West.  I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.  My wife and I settled into the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"So I saw The Revenant\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Speaking of the Dying West.  I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.  My wife and I settled into the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Daffey Thoughts\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-01-16T11:37:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/files\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-IoK7DNEX3G8\/VpptnT4s_xI\/AAAAAAAAGnY\/bfwlFR1YZCg\/s320\/revenant-snow-xlarge.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Griffey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dave Griffey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html\",\"name\":\"So I saw The Revenant\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2016-01-16T11:37:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-16T11:37:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#\/schema\/person\/9de3f33a0818ebc53727444b649c82a7\"},\"description\":\"Speaking of the Dying West.  I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.  My wife and I settled into the\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"So I saw The Revenant\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/\",\"name\":\"Daffey Thoughts\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#\/schema\/person\/9de3f33a0818ebc53727444b649c82a7\",\"name\":\"Dave Griffey\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/546cf1ab64797c201cc8ad19185f2e57?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/546cf1ab64797c201cc8ad19185f2e57?s=96&d=identicon&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Dave Griffey\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/author\/dgriffey\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"So I saw The Revenant","description":"Speaking of the Dying West.  I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.  My wife and I settled into the","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"So I saw The Revenant","og_description":"Speaking of the Dying West.  I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.  My wife and I settled into the","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html","og_site_name":"Daffey Thoughts","article_published_time":"2016-01-16T11:37:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.production.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/files\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-IoK7DNEX3G8\/VpptnT4s_xI\/AAAAAAAAGnY\/bfwlFR1YZCg\/s320\/revenant-snow-xlarge.jpg"}],"author":"Dave Griffey","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Dave Griffey","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html","name":"So I saw The Revenant","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#website"},"datePublished":"2016-01-16T11:37:00+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-16T11:37:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#\/schema\/person\/9de3f33a0818ebc53727444b649c82a7"},"description":"Speaking of the Dying West.  I went to see it on the big screen on a rare date night courtesy of our boys.  My wife and I settled into the","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2016\/01\/so-i-saw-the-revenant.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"So I saw The Revenant"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/","name":"Daffey Thoughts","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#\/schema\/person\/9de3f33a0818ebc53727444b649c82a7","name":"Dave Griffey","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/546cf1ab64797c201cc8ad19185f2e57?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/546cf1ab64797c201cc8ad19185f2e57?s=96&d=identicon&r=g","caption":"Dave Griffey"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/author\/dgriffey"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2805"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}