For Your Consideration, Delaney

EXT.SPANISH VILLA, LOS ANGELES-DAY

LEONARDO DICAPRIO walks up the drive to the villa and rings the doorbell.

 

TITLE: LAST SATURDAY MORNING IN HOLLYWOOD…

 

While he waits he takes out his phone and scrolls down a list of names.

 

CLOSE ON: Delaney. Agent, friend of Micawber-Mycroft, likes potted plants.

 

DELANEY, an agent to the stars, opens the door, looking more confused than usual.

 

DICAPRIO: Well, good morning, Delaney.

DELANEY: Uh, hello.

DICAPRIO: (Brushing past him) Thanks for inviting me into your home.

DELANEY: I didn’t actually…

 

INT.CHEZ DELANEY-DAY

Delaney shuts the door and turns around to see DiCaprio stroking the leaves of a fern.

 

DICAPRIO: It’s nice to see someone else who appreciates the comfort a good potted plant can give to a residence.

DELANEY: Do you like potted plants too?

DICAPRIO: Absolutely. Absolutely! I knew when Christopher Nolan mentioned that you were a devotee of potted plants that you were my kind of man.

DELANEY: But, I don’t know Christopher Nolan.

DICAPRIO: Pssshh! Nolan knows Micawber-Mycroft, you know Micawber-Mycroft, and so I feel like I really know you. We men of potted plants.

DELANEY: Did Mycroft give you my address?

DICAPRIO: No, I looked it up in the Academy’s records office.

DELANEY: Are they allowed to just give out members’ addresses like that?!

DICAPRIO: Well, it’s not strictly speaking legal. (He gives Delaney a dazzling smile. A smile that understood him just as far as Delaney wanted to be understood, and believed in him as Delaney would like to believe in himself. Delaney blinks.)

DICAPRIO: I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve called on you this fine morning.

DELANEY: It had crossed my mind. It’s very early.

DICAPRIO: Early?! Good God man, it’s very nearly 9am. You’re the fourth person I’ve called on this morning. I’d like to talk to you about my Oscar.

DELANEY: You want an Oscar for The Revenant?

DICAPRIO: Yes, I do. Let’s face it. It’s time.

 

DiCaprio turns and walks into the kitchen. Delaney picks up a watering-can from the floor beside the fern, and follows him. He sets to loving work on a potted plant sitting on the kitchen island that DiCaprio is now lounging against.

 

DICAPRIO: We gardeners, we understand the virtue of patience. We understand nourishing. I’ve paid my dues. What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? The Aviator. Blood Diamond. The Wolf of Wall Street. Now, like a yucca, I am finally flowering.

DELANEY: But, about The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: It was so cold, so bitterly cold, but I acted my heart out. Let me explain something of my method. When I was lighting gunpowder on my face to cauterise a wound how did I convey the appropriate amount of pain?

DELANEY: I don’t know.

DICAPRIO: I thought about how I got beaten for my subtle portrayal of intellectual diffability by Tommy Lee Jones doing his Tommy Lee Jones gruff shtick.

DELANEY: Yes, but about The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: When I dragged myself out of the shallow grave I channelled the fury and determination that I felt when, after saving Scorsese from making Nicolas Cage movies and Tibet travelogues, I didn’t win an Oscar for playing a true-life figure struggling with mental health issues.

DELANEY: See, about The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: When I had to float down through rapids in freezing water I thought about how with Blood Diamond I’d made a socially responsible film with a socially responsible director, nailed a tricky accent, and still didn’t win an Oscar. What is freezing water compared to that agony?

DELANEY: It’s just that The Revenant…

DICAPRIO: When I had to eat raw bison liver I just howled inwardly, thinking if I act like an actual wolf maybe they might regret snubbing me as The Wolf of Wall Street.

DELANEY: Mycroft thinks The Revenant is a Discovery special, not high art!

 

DiCaprio stares at Delaney. Delaney looks at the floor. DiCaprio sighs.

 

DICAPRIO: Look, I didn’t want to bring it up. But, for The Revenant’s big scene I, I… Well look, I’ll just come straight out and say it. I was… ((leans forward to Delaney’s ear, whispers inaudibly).

DELANEY: (recoils in horror) NO!!!! NO!! Really?!

DICAPRIO: Yes, for the sake of art. Whatever it takes to get the Oscar, Delaney, whatever it takes.

DELANEY: Well that changes everything. I’ll have to call Janine right now.

DICAPRIO: Who?

DELANEY: My secretary. She handles all my paperwork.

DICAPRIO: Oh. Well, you call right away. I’ll just sit here. (Smiles at him again.)

DELANEY: (fumbles with his phone) Janine! (beat) Yes, I know today is Saturday, but Leonardo DiCaprio is in my villa. (beat) Really! (beat) He’s doing the Gatsby smile, Janine, I think I can tell whether it’s him or a conman. I want to give him my vote for Best Actor. The poor guy was… (whispers inaudibly).

 

DiCaprio smiles, takes out his phone and starts scrolling down a list of names again

 

DELANEY: What do you mean he wasn’t? He’s sitting right here, I’m telling you, and he says he was.

 

DiCaprio pockets the phone, and leans forward, looking concerned.

 

DELANEY: What difference does it make if the bear was female? What are you trying to say? Is this a trick question to make me commit a micro-aggression? Wait, the bear was CGI? So he couldn’t have been–

 

DiCaprio bolts from the kitchen island, and glad-hands Delaney in passing.

 

DICAPRIO: Delaney, it’s been great catching up. Keep watering that plant now.

The Revenant

Birdman director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu goes into the wild with Leonardo DiCaprio for a survival story in the Old West.

DiCaprio is Glass, a scout for an expedition led by Domhnall Gleeson’s Captain Henry, hunting for animal pelts along the Missouri River. But this puts them into dangerous proximity to ‘the Ree’ aka the Iroquois Nation. After a surprise attack by the Iroquois, who transpire to be on a Searchers mission for their chief’s kidnapped daughter, the pelt party has to literally abandon ship and head into the snowy mountains. Unfortunately that’s when Glass has an intimate encounter with an irate bear. And when the antagonistic Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) is left in charge of his care, while the rest of the party trek on, you get the feeling this won’t end well. Sure enough Fitzgerald ditches a not quite dead Glass in a shallow grave. Glass though claws his way out, and clings to life for the sake of revenge…

Not that this is a revenge movie. There’s about 20 minutes of revenge at the end. Prior to that you are watching a survival movie which quite often feels like a feature ‘Old West’ special of Bear Grylls: Born Survivor aka Man Vs Wild. Glass utilises a number of Bear’s tricks: he rearranges stones in a river to catch fish, scoops the guts out of a horse to hide inside its carcass to avoid a storm, uses a flint to light a fire, and even manages to break his fall off a cliff by using a tree. The one unconscionable thing he does is eat snow, which Bear has repeatedly warned against; but as Glass had lost his canteen at that point he probably gets a Mulligan. DiCaprio gives a committed performance, proudly displaying a kinship with Pierce Brosnan when it comes to the grunting and moaning in pain school of physical acting, while Hardy is a good antagonist; his naked self-interest quite probably as correct as Peter Weller’s misgivings in Star Trek Into Darkness.

Inarritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski shot only in natural light in what seems little more than creating unnecessary difficulties in order to prove their worth as artistes. It doesn’t add much to the cinematic experience, these landscapes speak for themselves; indeed it grates when you’re asked to marvel at CGI animals when you’ve seen the real bison and wolves in The Hunt on the BBC. The Iroquois attack is spectacular because of the shooting style, but thereafter the in-DiCapario’s-face affectation becomes annoying. You wish the camera would back up about four feet and jack up another five so you could have some sense of location and action. There is a scene where gravely injured Glass gets down from a cliff in one startling jump-cut, the total lack of establishing shots makes you wonder if he just rolled over the edge…

The Revenant is 2 hours 36 minutes but it flies by. An engaging how-to manual for surviving the Old West ought not be confused with high cinematic art though just because its makers made its shoot a living hell.

3/5