The Revenant

THE REVENANT                 C-              
USA  (156 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Alejandro González Iñárritu            Official Site

A bloated and largely overrated film about the wretched and the damned, where in the world of Hollywood bigger is better, so this existential tale of survival, which could resemble Robert Redford’s minimalistic effort in J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost (2013), is blown up to elevate and heighten its own sense of importance, literally plagiarizing Terrence Malick cinematic techniques to provide a sense of worldly transcendence, all of which makes this more than it is.  While there is a behind-the-scenes backstory about how difficult it was to make this film in the raw, wintry elements of Alberta, Canada, moving to the mountains of Argentina when there was insufficient snow, where the director is quoted as having indicated, “Every molecule of this film was absolutely difficult.”  Well that was by choice and by design, as this director intentionally makes the overall film experience as brutal and difficult as possible, enlarging and exaggerating a real-life endurance story from Michael Punke’s 2002 novel The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge to near mythological proportions, but in the process, the landscape is so overwhelming that humans are reduced to a near primitive state, as if living in the Stone Age.  While there is literally no story whatsoever expressed in the film, where we don’t understand the men’s connection to one another or what their mission is actually supposed to be, as events simply spiral out of control from the outset when we are introduced to them in the midst of a raging Indian battle, where the majority of their party is lost, forcing them to retreat by making their way onto a giant boat and heading down river, where they believe they are sitting targets for more Indian attacks.  At least partially based on the real-life fur trapper explorations of frontiersman Hugh Glass, the subject of Western lore often noted for its frequent embellishment, who was part of General Ashley's expedition of 1823 following the Missouri River through South Dakota into Montana, there is dissension in the ranks which develops into the overriding story throughout the film, as whatever strategy is suggested to accomplish their mission is fiercely contested.  But when Glass is mauled by a grizzly bear, the severity of his wounds are so dire that he is left for dead by the members of his party, taking his weapons and essential supplies, only to crawl out of the grave they left him in, trekking 350 miles through the wilderness alone in the dead of winter, literally clawing his way back to civilization, resurfacing at the nearest military post in Fort Kiowa, South Dakota.    

According to historian Jon T. Coleman, author of Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation, one of the attributes of American mountain men was their inherent ability to engage in hyperbole, as they were actively involved in stretching the imagination in the making of their own myths, where fabricating stories was woven into the actual history of the American West.  These men were “marginal people laboring in far-off places,” who came to be America’s heroes by working in such dangerous situations and placing themselves in harm’s way.   

Calamity preyed on Glass because he was vulnerable. His employer and his nation couldn’t protect him. He never established the alliances with the Indian leaders that safeguarded previous generations of European traders in the West. He bet his life on a poorly conceived scheme: that Americans thought they could sneak into the region, harvest furs with their own labor, and get out before the Native inhabitants punished them for their trespasses. This strategy worked for some—William Ashley emerged golden—but the majority of employees and free trappers slogged through the majestic scenery gaunt, scarred, and busted. The West beat them to pulp.

While this bit of background information at least frames the film, the director’s unwillingness to do the same results in a freefall into a narrative abyss, a hole the viewer is never able to crawl out of, as there is never anything resembling an actual story or any clear understanding of what brought these men together, as they are led by a military commander, engage in an unending war with the Indians, but they’re not soldiers, or even hired mercenaries, but simply hunters and fur trappers sent on an unknown mission, where one would presume Indians are among their trading partners, yet all this is lost in the psychological extremities of the film itself.  The opening twenty minutes or so are among the best scenes of the film, as the disorientation plays into the chaos of the battlefield, where the roving camerawork by Emmanuel Lubezki mixes an uncontrollable panic with painterly compositions and the visceral experience of death, offering something of a shock to the senses right from the outset.  In the aftermath, as the men drift away to apparent safety on one of their rafts, that panic-stricken mood only grips them deeper, as they are a divisive group led by Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), who defers to Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) acting as their guide, as he has the most experience working in the area, recommending traversing an inland path away from the river and away from the Indians, where they would have to hide much of their gear and come back for it later, as it would simply be too much to carry, a thought immediately contested by John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), who finds it foolhardy to leave the river and all that they collected, which amounts to abandoning their earnings.  Throwing it all away does not sit well with him, so he engages in a battle of vicious verbal warfare targeting Glass as untrustworthy, as he’s spent time living among the Indians and is traveling with his own half-Pawnee son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), who dresses and identifies as an Indian.  This kind of racist venom may be typical of the times, but it’s brutally ugly, putting everyone on edge, where it soon becomes clear that the resentment is so deep that Fitzgerald would just as soon kill Glass than follow his orders.  The severity of the bear attack gives him that opportunity, as it becomes too burdensome carrying Glass through the wilderness, so Henry, fearing another Indian attack, leaves a small attachment behind to give him a proper burial, as his death appears imminent.  Fitzgerald volunteers for the assignment and undermines the mission from the start, fabricating a story of having seen Indians nearby, claiming they can no longer wait, secretly murdering his son Hawk, claiming he’s gone missing, then burying the gravely wounded Glass alive.

 
What follows is an existential resurrection of epic proportions, grim and foreboding, becoming a story of Odysseus enduring what God, man, Mother Nature, and the elements could throw at him and somehow he still manages to survive.  A “revenant” is a ghost returned from the grave, often to terrorize the living, but what we’re witness to is an example of torture porn, as there’s some question whether DiCaprio is even acting.  Instead he’s forced to endure every notion of physical hardship the director could batter him with, growing ridiculous after awhile, where we’re forced to witness a series of grunts and groans and moaning to the heavens with close-ups on a bloodied face, going to excessively showy and gratuitous heights, literally piling on the misery, becoming narcissistically brutal, where the primitive conditions feel like a return to Neanderthal times, forcing DiCaprio to plunge into frozen rivers, stagger half-naked through the frigid cold, jump off a hundred-foot cliff while riding a horse yet surviving with all his limbs intact, sleep in the carcass of a dead animal, grab fish out of water or meat from a freshly killed animal and eat it raw, blood dripping from his mouth.  It becomes pathetic when a filmmaker feels obliged to wring every ounce of anguish and abomination out of the situation, intentionally bombarding the audience with just how dire and destitute his situation is, turning wretched after awhile, reminiscent of Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004),  piling on the gloom and doom, so that the mindnumbing effect on the audience feels overly sadistic and tortuous, as if the intent of the director is to literally pile on every vile aspect of human torment, which has the effect of intentionally pummeling an audience into submission.  Perhaps even worse, the film is so blatantly moralistic, all good or evil, and goes to such extraordinary lengths to copycat the cinematic style of Terrence Malick in The New World (2005) or 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life, from the vastness of primeval landscapes (shot by the same cinematographer) to the spirit voices of the dead that accompany Glass’s journey, an offensive tactic to cinephiles, as the eloquence of Malick’s transcendent films are so uniquely reverent and sacred, yet here it feels so meaningless, as his characters are one-note throughout, without an ounce of progression throughout the storyline.  Tom Hardy was lauded for his performance, becoming the personification of evil, yet it sounds like he has rocks in his mouth, as you can’t understand a word he says throughout the entire picture.  While this over-indulgent effort is hailed for its brutality, garnering 12 Academy Award nominations, yet it’s another Hollywood exercise of excess and exaggeration, feeling stupefying empty for a nearly 3-hour experience, clearly becoming one of the most overrated films of the year.    

Guest review by Jonathan Dabian 

So, I love the film, actually.  And I kind of hate it.  But I’ll get to that later.

I think you have misjudged the film.  Rather harshly...and a little inaccurately.  You don’t like violence and brutality in film.  That’s ok.  I get that.  Unfortunately, I think that kind of blinds you to certain films.

This film exists in the realm of Ernest Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy.  For these authors, life is about the interplay of simple animal survival with higher concepts and masculine ideals like responsibility, duty, self-actualization, and engagement with society.  Malick plays in this realm too, particularly in The Thin Red Line.  I’m not referring to the “nature photography” you were talking about, but about the ways that Elias Koteas’ & John Cusack’s characters handled their duty in leading their men in assaults.  They knew the costs would be monstrous, but they had their objectives, and they were determined to honor their duties and fulfill their responsibilities.

I do not think the film resides in the Manichean black & whites you see.  Pretty much every character is grey.  The American and French trappers aren’t purely victims.  They’re ravaging the environment by killing all of the animals the local Native American populations relied-upon for survival.  And they’re doing it simply to obtain furs for the fur trade.  The Arikara warriors are one of the two main antagonists in the film (from Glass’ perspective), but they aren’t unreasoning.  Their rampage is motivated by the willful destruction of their environment by the French and American trappers, the assault upon their tribe by American soldiers, and the kidnapping of their Chief’s daughter by the French trappers.  More specifically, Glass is defending himself and his son against the Arikara and Fitzgerald, while simultaneously being party to the destruction of the environment committed by the American trappers and soldiers (see also the destruction of the buffalo herds, which is referenced in at least two shots with the piles of buffalo skulls).  Fitzgerald is in the same position being a party to the destruction of the environment and the murderer of Glass’ son.  Glass and Fitzgerald are also, however, fighting for their own survival in their own Western/American/Capitalist world.  While we can judge them negatively for their destruction of the environment that the Arikara and Pawnee rely upon to survive, we can’t judge them negatively for their desire to survive within their own worlds.  EVERYONE has the right to survive (but not at the expense of someone else’s survival).  Neither of the main characters, or the four cultures portrayed in the film (American, French, Pawnee, Arikara), are purely black and white (well, maybe the Pawnee).

In fact, the only people in the film who aren’t portrayed negatively in some way are the Pawnee who are victims of both the European colonials and the Arikara.  They’ve been driven from their homes by the assault upon the environment, and Arikara depredations (the Pawnee man who saves Glass mentions that his family and village were massacred by the Arikara), assault by soldiers (Glass’ wife was killed by soldiers, and his son nearly so as well); and those Pawnee left are stuck living in a slum outside the fort.  Their women are used as prostitutes inside the fort by American trappers.

You mention the “spirit of Terrence Malick.”  In many ways this is due to both of them using Emmanuel Lubezki as their shared Cinematographer.  However, I maintain that while there’s certainly a lot of “natural beauty” and landscapes in both films, the use of natural settings is thematically VERY different for the two directors.  Malick focuses on making his natural scenes quasi-religious and philosophical.  Iñárritu uses these big natural vistas in the background, but he doesn’t elevate them to the level of poetry like Malick does (outside of a handful of scenes).  Iñárritu uses nature as the background.  Malick uses it as the subject.  Lubezki just happens to be driving the camera for both.

Glass’ journey is driven due to, initially, his commitment to duty (his job as lead tracker and guide); and then after Fitzgerald’s betrayal and murder of his son, commitment to his son/family.  His journey is filled with horrors, but it is necessary, even with the massive threats to his own survival, to fulfill his duty to his son and repay the debt due to Fitzgerald.  To abrogate this responsibility would be unthinkable.  He might as well be dead otherwise.  This is the same dilemma that motivates Koteas’ & Cusack’s characters in The Thin Red Line.  Koteas’ character abrogates his responsibility.  He disobeys his orders and loses his command and his place among his men.  Essentially, he loses his life and his place in society.  Cusack’s character does his grim duty.  He sees some of his men die.  He kills many others (the Japanese).  However, he fulfills his duty and preserves his place in society and his ability to continue leading, and protecting, his men.  (Actually, I’ve totally forgotten to mention Caviezel’s character too.  He faces the same dilemma as Koteas’ character, initially chooses the same path as Koteas’ character, and then re-embraces his duty and pays the ultimate price for it.  But in doing so, he protects the rest of the men in his scouting party and the lives of his entire Company).  This is very similar to the paths followed by Hemingway’s protagonists Robert Jordan (For Whom the Bell Tolls) and Thomas Hudson (Islands in the Stream).  McCarthy’s protagonists Suttree, Moss, and The Man also engage with these issues in Suttree, No Country for Old Men, and The Road (respectively).

Since seeing The Revenant, I have been haunted by the final images of Glass climbing up the hill, favoring his wounds, to see a hallucination of his gentle Pawnee wife in idyllic natural surroundings.  In his eyes you can see all of the torture and pain, all of the threats to his survival that he’s endured over the last few weeks (see note below) in order to fulfill his duty.  Contrasting all of that pain against an idyllic and peaceful existence with nature, the film is asking the audience:  “Was it worth it?  Was fulfilling his responsibility worth the horrors he committed and endured?  Would he have been better-off disengaging and surrendering his agency, like Suttree, and Caviezel’s & Koteas’ characters in The Thin Red Line?”

Note:  Remember, this film doesn’t take place over the course of a day or two.  If I remember correctly, after they abandon Glass, the remaining scout says it’s going to take them three weeks to circumnavigate the mountains to the fort.  Glass’ journey would have been even longer than that, due to his wounds, thus addressing your comment about his ability to suddenly walk.  I don’t think he really regains his ability to walk again until after feeding from the downed buffalo with the Pawnee man and being placed in the make-shift, heated, healing teepee allowing his body to run a fever and burn out his infections.

Side note:  As I said in the beginning, I love The Revenant.  I also hate it.  Mainly because this film has the “spirit” of what I think a film adaptation of the second of Cormac McCarthy’s greatest works (the other being Suttree):  Blood Meridian.  Blood Meridian is one of those novels that has been in perpetual script development hell in Hollywood.  It’s epic.  It’s violent.  It’s incredibly risky, and probably unfilmable.  However, the way Iñárritu filmed The Revenant is exactly how I imagine Blood Meridian.  To the extent that, if anyone were to actually make Blood Meridian (and do it justice), it would probably be written off as a copy of The Revenant.  That said, I doubt that Blood Meridian will ever be made.  The scope of the film is simply too large and too niche.

Incidentally, another thing that makes me angry about this film is that it has MANY events, character traits, and bits of imagery that feature prominently in Blood Meridian.  Blood Meridian includes a bear attack.  Assaults on, and massacres of, Indian encampments.  A LONG journey and manhunt across the entire SW US and Mexico, from the plains and deserts of Texas & Mexico to snow-covered alpine forests in the Rocky Mountains, to the SanFran coast.  Massive brutal violent imagery, including mass scalp taking (hundreds of scalps taken for bounties).  A main character who is partially scalped (Toadvine in Blood Meridian, Fitzgerald in The Revenant).  The piles of buffalo skulls.  (Thirty-one million buffalo were slaughtered by American settlers in the plains between 1868 and 1881 in order to protect new cropland and to deprive the Native American tribes of the animal they relied-upon most for their survival.  They were nearly driven to extinction.  Less than a million are alive today.  The furs from the massacres were sent east.  The corpses left to rot in the fields.  The skulls stacked in piles.  This imagery features many times in McCarthy’s various novels, and very prominently in the denouement and epilogue to Blood Meridian.)  These were constant threats to the actual settlers of the period, but there are just too many similarities and overlaps between the two to avoid comparison should Blood Meridian ever be adapted to film.

I hope I’ve actually managed to say something half-way interesting, illuminating, and thought-provoking here.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)       B               

USA  (119 mi)  2014  d:  Alejandro González Iñárritu        Official site

This is a self-reflective, existential dark comedy about the inner life of an artist trying to make a comeback of a career that’s taken a tailspin into irrelevancy, a film that resembles the real life career of actor Michael Keaton as Birdman, as Keaton played Batman twice but refused to do it a third time, while in the film he made the multi-billion dollar blockbuster movie Birdman three times, but refused to do another, where in both cases his career plummeted soon afterwards.  Stylistically, González Iñárritu has made a freshly innovative and thoroughly entertaining film, grabbing the audience’s attention with a daring bit of supernatural energy on display, as Keaton has a continual dialogue with his inner self throughout the entire picture, where his darker, inner impulses speak in a no nonsense, profanity laden lower register that resembles the voice of Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but is, in fact, Keaton’s own.  While expressing what appears to be telekinetic forces, which may only be in his imagination, the film gives the impression that he possesses super powers, while denigrating everyone around him as lowlifes and hangers on, while he’s the real star of the show.  This alter ego is a nasty piece of business that often shows up as Birdman in costume, hovering around or even flying behind Keaton, spewing his venomous chatter that’s meant to puff up this fragile ego into believing he can do anything.  Driven by a jazzy drum score by Antonio Sanchez that expresses a ferocious energy, becoming the second film, after WHIPLASH (2014), showcasing a feverish drumbeat, providing an incessant stream of improvisation for the actors to feed off.  Perhaps just as quirky is the flashy technique of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, whose everpresent camera follows the actors around everywhere, in and out of backstage rooms, down narrow corridors leading onto the stage, as if the entire film was composed of a single shot.  Like a run-on sentence, this technique never allows the audience to catch their breath, as there is no down time, no breaks in the action, where it feels as if something is always happening.  This constant motion, along with the off-kilter atmosphere behind the scenes, feeds into the manic energy of continual interruption and confusion when staging a play, going through the incessant rehearsals, stroking the delicate egos, listening to the various demands, remembering the names of the stage hands, having to deal with last minute emergencies, where there’s simply no time to collect one’s thoughts.    

Keaton is Riggan Thompson, a former super hero actor who is trying twenty years later to regain his credibility as an artist by adapting, directing, and starring in Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, a collection of short stories from 1981, several of which were used by Robert Altman in Short Cuts (1993).  One of the personal revelations is discovering Riggan attributes his choice of acting as a profession to a complimentary note he once received from Raymond Carver written on a cocktail napkin.  Riggan has enlisted a rag-tag group of offbeat choices to inhabit this play, produced by Jake (Zach Galifianakis), his lowlife agent, best friend and personal attorney, starring first-time Broadway actress Lesley, a jittery Naomi Watts, a co-star he’s sleeping with, Laura, who may also be pregnant, the sensually alluring Andrea Riseborough, a last minute fill-in, Mike Shiner, Edward Norton, an egocentric New York theater superstar that guarantees increased box office, a loose cannon who thrives on method acting, is very specific about certain requested details, who’s also sleeping with his lead actress, while also reuniting with his own daughter fresh out of rehab, Emma Stone as Sam, a recovering drug addict still bitter that her father was never around, now serving as his assistant.  Some of the best moments of the film are reserved for Stone, who never seems to disappoint.  Keaton has always thrived on an understated, nervous energy, but here he is the butt of all jokes, constantly besieged by his alter-ego, a victim of his own increasingly dark hallucinations, much like the dancer in Aronofsky’s THE BLACK SWAN (2010), while the machinations of staging this play is a walking disaster, as everything that can go wrong does go wrong, becoming an absurd commentary on the supposed higher artistic realms of theater.  What cinema brings into the landscape is the element of fantasy taking place in Keaton’s head, where at times he can float on air, or fly through the streets of New York as his character Birdman once did, or with the snap of his fingers make things explode with a barrage of movie special effects that seem hilariously cheap and silly when seen in this light.  González Iñárritu seems more interested in using these techniques to get inside this perplexing character, who always seems on the verge of a breakdown while trying to maintain stability, which is interestingly enough the mindset of an actor, always challenged by the unfamiliarity of the next role.

Of course, this kind of thing has been done before, and to much better effect by John Cassavetes and the incomparable Gena Rowlands in Opening Night (1977), another troubled stage production that delves into the internalized anxieties of an actress who has doubts about playing the role, who thinks it’s all wrong, who wants it changed, even though it was written specifically for her.  While Cassavetes grounds his film on the beauty of live theater, where the agonies and self doubts are brought into the rigorous rehearsals onstage, where the performance is the thing, bringing to life a living and breathing quality to every moment, González Iñárritu accentuates through artifice, where one of the more brilliantly staged moments is when Riggan takes the stage, but his words are drowned out by the immaculately beautiful and devastatingly sad orchestral music of Mahler, Mahler 9th Symphony (1/9); 1st movement; Bernstein ... YouTube (10:00), a soaring work that initially seems to float on air, adding a profound sense of eloquence and poetic grace.  It’s the kind of ravishing moment that takes your breath away, that exists nowhere else in the picture, but in an instant, it’s gone.  There’s another surreal scene where Riggan gets locked outside the theater where he has to walk half naked through the crowds of Times Square, where people immediately recognize him as Birdman, wanting to take selfies, calling out that name, as if from the depths of his own conscience, where he will forever be inseparable with the role, yet he also becomes an overnight viral sensation, attracting the interest of thousands who would otherwise not be paying attention to him at all, but this is the younger generation’s concept of fame.  The problem is the film can’t sustain this kind of glorious energy, as there’s an uneven quality throughout and there are some questionable choices made as it winds down, where it all has to lead somewhere.  As opening night approaches, everyone’s worries and self-doubts are magnified, exaggerated by the omnipresent voice of Birdman, who has utter disgust for the entire human race, whose contempt expresses the degree of Riggan’s self-loathing, where there’s apparently a reason he hasn’t been heard from in 20 years.  Riggan loses his bearings, questioning the worth of it all, getting into a senseless verbal sparring match in a bar with the leading New York theater critic (Lindsay Duncan) who denounces the play without even seeing it, claiming he’s not a real theater person, that he’s a celebrity, a cheap imitation, despising his adolescent sense of entitlement.  The film is, in fact, a portrait of egocentrism, where every sequence revolves around the star, where the light can either shine or it can literally extinguish itself. 

Rust and Bone (De rouille et d'os)

 
RUST AND BONE (De rouille et d'os)            B                     

France  Belgium  (123 mi)  2011 ‘Scope  d:  Jacques Audiard    

Another savagely brutal film, where it seems directors have to ply ever deeper into extraordinary realms of violence to find new avenues of exploration for a public that apparently never grows saturated.  Part of the problem with elevating levels of violence is alienating an audience from the characters, who are often overly alienated themselves, creating a moral abyss or a human void, where characters onscreen are often numb to the world around them.  While Audiard has previously created vividly interesting characters, a gangster who plays classical piano in The Beat That My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeu... (2005), or a prison inmate lured into a larger criminal underworld as an act of self preservation in 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #10 A Prophet ... (2009), here his script lets him down with two lead characters so disconnected from the world and so completely repressed emotionally that it’s difficult to care about people who care so little for themselves.  Without offering any background information, Marion Cotillard plays Stéphanie, a trainer of Orca whales at the local French Marineland, while Matthias Schoenaerts, so unbelievably compelling in Bullhead (Rundskop) (2011), returns as Ali, a physically imposing, bulked up martial arts kickboxer who appears to be slumming it as a nightclub bouncer.  When Stéphanie gets her nose bloodied at a nightclub brawl, Ali politely drives her home where both get a good look at one another, but nothing comes of it.  Ali apparently left Belgium and is living with his always harried sister Anna (Corrine Masiero), who works as a check out clerk at a grocery store, and also, it seems, is the designated parent of Ali’s 5-year old son Sam (Arman Verdure), with no mother in the picture and a derelict father who takes momentary interest but then mostly ignores his responsibilities.   

Ali drifts to another job, installing black market security devices intended to spy on company staff instead of the public, as due to union protections this is often the only way to fire incompetent staff, becoming very popular with employers.   While we get a glimpse of both of them at their jobs, just brief sketches are provided, as neither employer is explored with any detail, where instead Audiard creates a sense of personal detachment simply by not taking more of an interest himself.  After what amounts to an audience feel-good music video by Kate Perry Katy Perry - Firework - YouTube (3:54) of synchronized Orca whales jumping in formation out of the water, all mysteriously goes haywire in a disaster that is never really shown, only suggested in a Jane Campion-style abstract underwater rendering that instead follows the devastating aftermath where Stéphanie wakes up in a hospital missing both legs below the knees.  While she’s psychologically traumatized, alone and alienated in a stunning reversal of fortune, Audiard also intercuts scenes of Ali watching YouTube video tapes of memorable martial arts fighters, where he’s offered extra money if he’ll participate in a few street brawls, which are little different than dog or cockfighting, as they’re brutally repellent illegal enterprises that make gads of quick money on high stakes betting.  With no one else to turn to, Stéphanie turns to Ali, calling him out of the blue, where he actually rises to the occasion, refusing to show pity, offering her instead some well-deserved consideration.  It should be noted that in the process, he continually ignores his own kid and often abuses him as well, so Ali is hardly a sympathetic character, turning this into a variation on the Beauty and the Beast story, where interestingly, Stéphanie might appear to be the beauty, but internally she feels as grotesque and disfigured as the beast, and similarly Ali might seem to be the beast, but in her eyes, with his physical prowess intact, she gazes longingly at the beauty in his physique and body movement, even if much of it is displayed in brute fashion.    

Much of the problem in this film is the way Audiard just skims over the surface, treating his leads like isolated planets revolving around themselves, never connecting to a universe around them, fast forwarding Stéphanie’s recovery without ever showing how difficult it is to recover from such an impactful injury.  In this film, she’s able to leglessly (and gracefully, in perhaps the most gorgeous scene in the film) swim in the sea or miraculously walk without wobbling just days after receiving two prosthetic legs, hardly realistic, as normally the recovery time is in months and years Stryker soldier learning to walk on two prosthetic legs | FOB Tacoma .  5-year old Sam doesn’t age a bit, and of course takes to Stéphanie right away, so you’d think there’s a chance Ali might change his ways, but he stubbornly remains just as troubling with him as always, showing little patience for the difficulties children exhibit learning new things.  Cotillard and especially Schoenaerts are both superb and work well together, but the predictable material lets them down, so instead this is a performance generated movie, where the complexity of their damaged souls is actually a mirror image of one another, where they can seek solace in what each must overcome.  Perhaps the problem is attempting to combine into one narrative a series of collected short stories by Canadian writer Craig Davidson, so rather than a series of vignettes, Audiard attempts to link them all together, which might explain the disjointed and contrived narrative elements.  In this film, their developing love (without actually loving) just happens out of the blue, much like Stéphanie’s recovery, without showing the difficulty of the enormous personal investment needed.  Somewhat reminiscent of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 GRAMS, where a freak accident causes a chain reaction, this is a painful film about loss and disappointment, leading to a kind of unadmitted, internalized desperation that plays out like open sores.  The finale, though beautifully expressed in the winter snow, feels horribly contrived, as Ali suddenly takes an interest in his son, something he hasn’t done throughout the entire movie, kind of wrapping the whole picture up in a bow.  Despite using a completely unsentimentalized approach, a story of love without romance, fueled by two immensely damaged and heavily guarded characters, the performances alone are not enough to suggest that shared personal misfortune can somehow overcome human inadequacy, as the redemptive breakthrough at the end hardly feels naturalistic or well earned.