Here we are again, and no one is excited than Russovoir. Leonardo DiCaprio deserves the Oscar for his performance in Alejandro-Gonzales Iñárritu's The Revenant. Let us begin with an article. This article was on Variety (Holy Bible of the film industry). It explained why Dicaprio didn't win the Oscar for the role of Jordon Belfort in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street. Russovoir read it, and has read it again so he may able to lay it on to you in the best of his abilities*
The article begins with a line that's, almost, comforting. Cool guys don't win Oscars. Comforting in a sense that performance acting is not a walk in the park career choice. It can be, undoubtedly. Russovoir is not an actor, so he can't back this up, but he has been watching films since 15, and back when he got his own plasma flat screen in his room, he's aware of the glitz and glamour of the high life. Performance acting is actual hard work of getting into character, days of line reading, months of research - but years of value. Performance acting is method acting; there's a method to this madness.
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| "While there's life, there's hope." |
The actor that comes to millennial mind is Eddie Redmayne (picture above) as Stephen Hawking in the 6-time Academy Award nominated film The Theory of Everything (2014). A gay man would say this film is everything. Or winding back the clock, Russell Crowe in 2002 Academy Award Best Picture A Beautiful Mind. The article has brought to our attention 2000 Academy Award Best Actor Tom Hanks of Cast Away. Then, it gets interesting. James Murphy, the writer, introduces a polarity.
Brad Pitt-Tom Hanks Continuum: The Definition of Movie Cool
Pitt (0 Oscar, on the left side) - Mysterious, Remote
Hanks (2 Oscars, on the right side) - Uninhibited, Immersive
This polarity Murphy that by now you have plotted in your head is interestingly effective. On the Pitt side, an actor who has had slim chances of winning because the character he has played is, as he put it, is 'leave you wondering what it would be like to be them, without imagining that you could'. Classic Pitt roles like Fight Club (1999) - we don't talk about it, and Inglourious Basterds (2009). On the right corner, Hanks is regarded as a likable character. The roles he play, the complete opposite, inviting, communicative, and on an emotional level, sympathetic. Furthermore, saving the best for last on the first half of Murphy's article, think of the Oscar as the jealous type. It wants to shine all its goldness, the attention to it; no one shares with it. Cool guys don't win Oscars. Historically, the Oscar always goes to the disabled, mentally ill, gay, oppressed, and ugly.
On the top of your head, what is/are DiCaprio's sympathetic (Hanksian, as Murphy coins it) character(s)? Can we all agree What's Eating Gilbert Grape (2003)? Russovoir hears Titanic (1997) from the back. That's right too. The Basketball Diaries (1995)? Sure, let's pencil that in. Murphy thought these films we mentioned had placed DiCaprio in a sweet spot early on his career (he was only in his 20's!), and later were frustratingly snubbed for reasons surely justified. He was in good hanks, as Russovoir would say (laughs). However, since then, films he has made throughout his successful career, as Murphy points out, were stellar performances - Blood Diamond (2006) as a personal favorite - yet not the kinds deserving an Oscar. Cool guys don't win Oscars. It has now been evident that the polarity chart is a helpful tool to determine who will win. Now everyone's a critic! Fun.
(bathroom break)
Let's look at The Revenant as a whole first, before we close in on Caprio. Because as they say in the filmmaking business, the real winners are those behind the camera. The film is a tremendous group effort; it's still amazing how all that hard work is jammed in a disc that no hand on which it reflects can mirror the callous and cuts each department had to endure to achieve master frames (not just million dollar budget films of course. Especially independent films).
Until hell freezes over, one would say to an unthinkable accusation. Well, been there, done that, as hell was frozen for five (5) months throughout the filming of The Revenant. -40 degrees. That's like Chicago in polar vortex two years ago. Probably worst. All the while reports have documented boiling points from the crew against the director had picked up steam (Skotchdople VS Iñárritu). Crewmembers eventually understandably quit, resignation signed with a frostbitten hand or coming down with - not a cold, silly - hypothermia!
That, and then some (case in point where he went overbudget, yikes!), came down like an avalanche to the visionary Mexican auteur. In an interview, that felt like fresh patch of snow, he came clean. "I have nothing to hide. There were problems but none of them made me ashamed. As a director, if a violin is out of tune, I have to take out from the orchestra." (Did you hear that in his sexy Mexican accent too?)
Brad Pitt-Tom Hanks Continuum: The Definition of Movie Cool
Pitt (0 Oscar, on the left side) - Mysterious, Remote
Hanks (2 Oscars, on the right side) - Uninhibited, Immersive
This polarity Murphy that by now you have plotted in your head is interestingly effective. On the Pitt side, an actor who has had slim chances of winning because the character he has played is, as he put it, is 'leave you wondering what it would be like to be them, without imagining that you could'. Classic Pitt roles like Fight Club (1999) - we don't talk about it, and Inglourious Basterds (2009). On the right corner, Hanks is regarded as a likable character. The roles he play, the complete opposite, inviting, communicative, and on an emotional level, sympathetic. Furthermore, saving the best for last on the first half of Murphy's article, think of the Oscar as the jealous type. It wants to shine all its goldness, the attention to it; no one shares with it. Cool guys don't win Oscars. Historically, the Oscar always goes to the disabled, mentally ill, gay, oppressed, and ugly.
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| 2003 Oscar Best Actor Adrien Brody as a Jew in The Pianist. |
On the top of your head, what is/are DiCaprio's sympathetic (Hanksian, as Murphy coins it) character(s)? Can we all agree What's Eating Gilbert Grape (2003)? Russovoir hears Titanic (1997) from the back. That's right too. The Basketball Diaries (1995)? Sure, let's pencil that in. Murphy thought these films we mentioned had placed DiCaprio in a sweet spot early on his career (he was only in his 20's!), and later were frustratingly snubbed for reasons surely justified. He was in good hanks, as Russovoir would say (laughs). However, since then, films he has made throughout his successful career, as Murphy points out, were stellar performances - Blood Diamond (2006) as a personal favorite - yet not the kinds deserving an Oscar. Cool guys don't win Oscars. It has now been evident that the polarity chart is a helpful tool to determine who will win. Now everyone's a critic! Fun.
(bathroom break)
Let's look at The Revenant as a whole first, before we close in on Caprio. Because as they say in the filmmaking business, the real winners are those behind the camera. The film is a tremendous group effort; it's still amazing how all that hard work is jammed in a disc that no hand on which it reflects can mirror the callous and cuts each department had to endure to achieve master frames (not just million dollar budget films of course. Especially independent films).
Until hell freezes over, one would say to an unthinkable accusation. Well, been there, done that, as hell was frozen for five (5) months throughout the filming of The Revenant. -40 degrees. That's like Chicago in polar vortex two years ago. Probably worst. All the while reports have documented boiling points from the crew against the director had picked up steam (Skotchdople VS Iñárritu). Crewmembers eventually understandably quit, resignation signed with a frostbitten hand or coming down with - not a cold, silly - hypothermia!
That, and then some (case in point where he went overbudget, yikes!), came down like an avalanche to the visionary Mexican auteur. In an interview, that felt like fresh patch of snow, he came clean. "I have nothing to hide. There were problems but none of them made me ashamed. As a director, if a violin is out of tune, I have to take out from the orchestra." (Did you hear that in his sexy Mexican accent too?)
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| Iñárritu, 3 Oscars, 51 years old. |
(South Park break)
Now it's all coming down to this. Leonardo DiCaprio, and why he must win. Not because the internet wants him to, and forever silence the protests. The wolf doesn't listen to the opinion of the sheep. Harsh, but yeah, no, Johnny Depp, until he cleans up his act, while his performance in Black Mass (2015) felt like Ashton Kutcher in Jobs (2013) and focus on performance acting, there's no Oscar for him - while he is an indelible cultural icon, full credit given.
DiCaprio portrayed American hunter and explorer Hugh Glass. If there's one thing you must know about him, and obvious in the epic, is that he literally lived to tell the tale. Straight up, was he a cool guy? Well, let's break the story down first. What's fact and fiction in the film. It's a fact that Hugh Glass, during an ambulatory expedition, was mauled by a foraging grizzly bear. There, he was butchered, skin off the bones, for which was fed to her grizzly cubs.
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| Hugh Glass monument, Lemmon, South Dakota. |
It's also historically accurate his fellow explorers left him for dead, after taking his equipment for their own use, and dug an open grave. In between contracting fever, and yes out of survival, Glass ate a raw bison liver** and fish, he was still in one piece. And it's fact he had wanted John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger dead, two of his companions who agreed to his vivisepulture. The true motive of Glass' excruciating journey, according the 1939 novel The Oregon Trail, was vengeance served ice-cold for his maltreatment. Wouldn't you?
Glass didn't have a son. That part is fiction. It was then a conscious directorial choice for Iñárritu to incorporate a Pawnee son, more so interracial marriages, while at that period of time the real story of Thanksgiving was in writing. The Revenant wins in cultural references.
To answer our question where he is in the Pitt-Hanks Continuum, ask yourself: Did DiCaprio's character invite you, the audience, to the experience, or were you outside looking in? Were the emotions shared? Anger, sorrow, vengeance, did you vicariously feel? Finally, was Glass a cool guy? Was he in a suit, like most of DiCaprio's roles? No. He was at his worst in every size, shape, and form. If anything, this is Tom Hanks' Cast Away, but at a historically racial hotbed approach. This is good. Dicaprio becomes, possibly even long before, a catalyst of reform - did you not watch his Golden Globes acceptance speech?
He's a beautiful soul. The Oscar always goes to a beautiful soul.
*Otherwise, help yourself and click here.
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| **DiCaprio reportedly also ate raw bison liver (and vomitted). |
Glass didn't have a son. That part is fiction. It was then a conscious directorial choice for Iñárritu to incorporate a Pawnee son, more so interracial marriages, while at that period of time the real story of Thanksgiving was in writing. The Revenant wins in cultural references.
To answer our question where he is in the Pitt-Hanks Continuum, ask yourself: Did DiCaprio's character invite you, the audience, to the experience, or were you outside looking in? Were the emotions shared? Anger, sorrow, vengeance, did you vicariously feel? Finally, was Glass a cool guy? Was he in a suit, like most of DiCaprio's roles? No. He was at his worst in every size, shape, and form. If anything, this is Tom Hanks' Cast Away, but at a historically racial hotbed approach. This is good. Dicaprio becomes, possibly even long before, a catalyst of reform - did you not watch his Golden Globes acceptance speech?
He's a beautiful soul. The Oscar always goes to a beautiful soul.
*Otherwise, help yourself and click here.
