The Revenant

The Revenant is the first film by Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel) following his hugely successful Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) that, as unconventional as it was, still managed to snatch Best Picture and three other golden statuettes at the last year’s Academy Awards. It sees Iñárritu reunited with Birdman’s genius cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (also behind the recent cinematic marvel Gravity) to deliver yet another Oscar-calibre picture with the same tour de force commitment to storytelling and visual brilliance, albeit one that is nowhere near as light on its feet (or its running time) as Birdman was.

The story, loosely based on real events, is set in 1823. A group of hunters and fur trappers seeking pelt in the snow-covered wilderness of Montana and South Dakota get ambushed by a tribe of Native Americans called Arikara. The hunting party (or, rather, what’s left of it) manages to escape the attack on one of their rafts led by captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) who is relying heavily on the navigational skills of a more experienced hunter by the name of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his half-caste son.

Scouting ahead of the group in the depths of an icy forest, Glass comes across a grizzly bear and to say he gets badly mauled is an understatement. He somehow manages to kill the bear and is found barely alive by the hunting party who carry him along even though he is slowing them down and the Arikara are nearing. As it is in life, some people are far more dangerous than bears and soon Glass and his son are ruthlessly sabotaged by the one criminal member of the group called John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). 

On a surface level, The Revenant a survival story in the vein of 12 Years a Slave, Apocalypto and Cast Away. That we are engrossed in for the full 156 minutes of it is a testament to the level of commitment and bravery with which Iñárritu and Lubezki approached the material, shooting in far-away locations, in actual frozen rivers, using natural lighting alone, highly elaborate camera movements and long takes that should make at least one quarter of the audience thinking “How did they do that?!” It is without a doubt one of the most visually breathtaking films of the year.

However, there is food for thought that comes with the harrowing narrative – the love of family, the human perseverance, the power of nature, camaraderie, the extent to which we go to revenge someone’s wrongful death, and, in the more poetic segments of the film - the sheer experience of existing on this planet. Like many great films, The Revenant is movie about what it is to be human. Which brings us to Leonardo DiCaprio. The actor is more raw here than you have seen him in years, giving an extremely physical performance with only a handful of lines of dialogue and conveying so much of Glass’ anguish and determination through his eyes alone.

It is impossible to talk about DiCaprio or the film as whole without going into speculation about the upcoming Academy Awards and, even in a year as fruitful as 2015 was, The Revenant will surely get attention in many categories including Best Picture, Director, Actor and Cinematography. Yet, a much more exciting question is where will the creative mind of Alejandro González Iñárritu take us next?

After an outing as rough and as masculine as this, a female-centred story would be most welcome.

10/10