DiCaprio may vomit and freeze his fingers for it, but it’s still not enough to warrant an Academy Award for The Revenant.
Praise must be given to The Revenant for its technical prowess. The production values of this film are amazing. Praise must also be given to the actors. The acting in this film is well done. Of course there are flaws, but overall it’s a well executed film, and it will probably win some awards at the Academy Awards this year. One of those awards, however, should not be Best Actor.
To be clear, it isn’t that Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t act well in The Revenant. It’s that this role is not an award-winning role. DiCaprio does all he can do with what he’s given, but what he’s given isn’t very complex or diverse.
The Revenant spoilers below
DiCaprio’s character, Hugh Glass, gets mauled by a bear in the beginning of the film, leaving Glass severely wounded and debilitated. There are open wounds from rips and tears and bites all over his body. His leg is busted up and he can’t walk on it. For a large portion of the movie he can’t even walk at all, having to crawl and drag himself from point A to point B. His throat is torn and he can’t speak.
As a result, most of the film is spent watching Glass hobble and wheeze through the vast terrain to get back to his people’s camp. Along the way he encounters one problem after another that almost gets him killed. Talk about a bad week.
DiCaprio makes us believe he’s in pain. We believe this man is on death’s door, struggling to survive, but that’s about all he does because that’s all there is to it. Glass’ emotions hardly vary in the entire two and a half hours. He’s in pain. He’s mad. Sometimes he’s sad. But mostly he’s in pain.
There’s no range in this performance, nothing that allows an actor to show off his abilities. Glass is very one-dimensional, despite feeble attempts to make him appear otherwise. The addition of a Native American wife and child feels exactly like what it is: A thrown in backstory to give Glass more of a purpose to survive, and to make him sympathetic, thus less of a ‘bad guy.’
It isn’t Glass himself that’s incredible, nor is it DiCaprio’s performance of him. What makes Glass, and by extension DiCaprio, seem so extraordinary are the ordeals he is put through. He’s attacked by a bear. He sees his son murdered. He’s buried alive. He eats raw fish and bison. He cauterizes his wound with gunpowder and a small flame on a stick. The list goes on. But that’s all plot and situations, not character development. None of that is particularly demonstrative of acting abilities when it’s all action and no feeling.
It’s true that DiCaprio was put through a lot during the filming process. Some days it was incredibly cold, dropping to -40 degrees, and he, as well as the other actors, couldn’t wear gloves or hats because it was only autumn in the film. He also ate real bison liver, even though the props department provided him with a jelly version. Despite popular belief, however, he was not attacked by a real bear, nor did he make camp in a real horse’s carcass.
Do these hardships warrant an award? Does the process taken to get an authentic performance mean an award is deserved? It shouldn’t. What an actor does behind the scenes has no relevance to what we see in the final product.
Even if DiCaprio’s real life hardships were considered, this wouldn’t work in the actor’s favor. You would think the best actor would be able to give a believable performance from acting, not from reacting to the realities around him. He had to act cold. Well, it was cold. No acting required. He had to act disgusted from eating raw bison. He ate raw bison and had a real, physical reaction. No acting. That isn’t to say it’s not impressive, but if you have to actually put yourself in the character’s situation in order to portray an authentic reaction, then it’s not really acting.
It’s a shame that DiCaprio’s long-awaited Oscar debate is taking attention away from those in the film who do have more to work with, and shine just as bright, if not brighter. Tom Hardy is captivating as the brash and manipulative John Fitzgerald, and Will Poulter excels in his secondary role of Bridger, easily garnering sympathy from audiences as we watch him struggle to do what’s right versus what’s easy.
Furthermore, when you look at the rest of the nominees for Best Actor, DiCaprio’s role pales in comparison. The Martian and The Revenant actually have quite similar stories: A man is left for dead, struggling to stay alive on his own until he finds help. For those who have seen both films, ask yourself which character you cared about more. Who tugged on your emotions? Presumably you’d say Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney.
Watney has the dimension and personality Glass doesn’t have, and Damon is able to adeptly portray every emotion Watney goes through with subtlety and endearment. He performs his role just as well as DiCaprio, except Watney has more meat to him than Glass. Damon is able to show a wider scope of his acting ability.
Similarly, Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl surely outperforms DiCaprio. He too has more to work with as Einar Wegener and Lili Elbe. The Danish Girl certainly has its faults, but the performance from Redmayne is what makes this film as good as it is (as well as his costar Alicia Vikander). Einar’s transformation to Lili could easily have been a camp caricature, but Redmayne has a delicacy and nuance that keeps you engaged and allows the character to have more substance than what was written on the page.
It’s possible the Academy will pass on Redmayne, as he won the Best Actor award just last year, and Damon could be dismissed since The Martian isn’t the kind of ‘serious’ movie that typically wins these awards. Perhaps the hype surrounding DiCaprio’s long-awaited award win will be enough to push the Academy into giving it to him. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time the Academy got it wrong.