It’s safe to say now that Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “The Revenant” is a huge hit. The film has hauled in nearly $150 million domestically and racked up 11 Oscar noms (including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, and Cinematography). And while this year two other Best Picture nominees (“The Martian” and “Mad Max: Fury Road”) have raked in bigger box office numbers, “The Revenant” is undoubtedly the toughest watch (and let’s not forget it first opened in limited release, which doesn’t often happen for a film with a budget over $130 million), a 151-minute bleak and bruising drama, that’s nearly nonstop punishment from start to finish.
To highlight just how incredible the experience of watching “The Revenant” is, The Petrick’s “The Revenant By Tarkovsky” supercut does exactly what the title suggests, putting it side-by-side with the work of the great Andrei Tarkovsky. The Russian auteur is widely considered to be one of greatest filmmakers of all time, and is often credited with reshaping the genre (if you need a brush up on the master, check out our Tarkovsky retrospective). There’s no question about how indebted Iñárritu’s film is to Tarkovsky’s body of work, both thematically and, more obviously, visually. “The Revenant by Tarkovsky” beautifully captures the homage, helping to peel back another layer of the deceptively complex film that, on the surface, pretends to be nothing more than a tale of revenge, but is really much more.
Check out the supercut below and weigh in with your thoughts in the comments.
