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“The Revenant” and “The Hateful Eight” have some things in common. Alejandro González Iñárritu and Quentin Tarantino, their respective directors, are widely considered to have “indie” credibility, pushing at the barriers of Hollywood but not breaking them. The two films are nominally Westerns but like just about all that are made nowadays wear their “revisionist” colors proudly. Finally, I came to them with low expectations since their last two films—“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” and “Django Unchained”—were major disappointments. While “Birdman” received the Academy Award for best film in 2014, I was unimpressed:
The film plays with notions of art versus commerce but only in the most superficial way. I suppose if you’ve never seen Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels” or Jean-Luc Godard’s “Contempt”, “Birdman” might pass muster. My misfortune is to be old enough to have seen such films in my youth and being spoiled by the experience.
The less said about “Django Unchained” the better. In fact I walked out on it after fifteen minutes. When Django shows up at slave-owner’s plantation wearing a powder-blue costume that appeared to be borrowed from a low-budget production of “Don Giovanni”, my patience wore out. I guess my logic fetish got the better of me.
full: http://louisproyect.org/2016/01/23/the-revenant-the-hateful-eight/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
