Dir Aléjándro G. Iñárritu | Wri: Mark L Smith DoP: Emmanuel Lubezki | Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhnall Gleeson, Forrest Goodluck, Brendan Fletcher | US 156′ | Adventure |
Mighty and mystical The Revenant is a harrowing tale of revenge and survival. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio the focus in on the emerging arrogance of the 1820s frontiersmen towards the local Native American tribes as they pushed westward across Montana and South Dakota.
Magically poetic and brutally savage it travels beyond the realms of mainstream American filmmaking with every frame evoking the mystery of the ancient with the mastery of modern visual techniques. Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and his DoP Emmanuel Lubezki create a glorious and visceral portrait of man’s struggle to survive in the wilderness and his obduracy in overcoming the natural world. Leonardo DiCaprio carries the film in a performance infused with his charismatic strength and vulnerability. The other great performance is from Nature itself.
Iñárritu and his team inhabit the open space for most of the film’s 156 minutes’ running time, during which both ethereal silence and feral sound is a key player. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s atmospheric score occasionally adds an ominous twist as Lubezki’s camera slinks around at a snail’s pace uniting man, nature and beast in one magnificent revolving universe, savouring melting ice peaks, iridescent sunsets, floating mists, prowling paws, even the breath of its striving hero as its clouds the intimate lens: this is a film to savour for its moments of peace silently picture nature and its pitiless ferocity. At one point a rifle shot actually triggers a distant avalanche: Kubrick and Konchalovskiy would be proud.
In the Rocky Mountains, twenty years after the first expedition to America’s unknown western portion had been ordered by Jefferson (to draw up a new map of the territory and establish trade with the local Native American tribes) Iñárritu and Smith base their script on real people, as well as loosely on those from Punke’s 2002 novel, charting Glass’s gruelling, monosyllabic journey.
The story opens as a local Pawnee tribe is savagely routed by a group of white fur trappers. Iñárritu refreshingly uses arrow warfare as a swift and deadly twist on the usual ‘smoking guns and war hammers’ mode. Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is a frontiersman travelling with his son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) and Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), and valued because he has had the benefit of Pawnee culture passed on from his dead wife (whose spirit we see in existential dream sequences as she encourages him to “keep breathing”). He also benefits from a grasp of the lingo, customs and lay of the land.
The men’s drubbing severely curtails their fur trading mission. With winter’s arrival and their physical strength and supply of pelts sapped, misfortune continues to dog the party. Glass has the misfortune to be mauled by a mother grizzly bear (in an extraordinary piece of ultra-realism) while taking a pot shot at one of her cubs. It’s a scene that’s both shocking and faintly humorous. Despite Captain Henry’s doctoring attempts, Glass’s wounds prevent him from walking and, with Henry going on ahead, he has to be carried by a cantankerous John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and a pubescent Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) who abandon him to die, half buried in a shallow grave. Glass’ struggle to survive takes over in the extraordinary second act where DiCaprio emerges an action hero harnessing his precious knowledge of the terroir to scavenge, scrape and scrounge his way across the wilderness.
Tom Hardy is the weakest link in the cast in an otherwise superb cast. Spouting bumbling gibberish in a non-discript accent from under his headscarf, he fails to alarm or even excite as the antihero, dragging down every scene he inhabits. As Glass makes his way to the fort, Fitzgerald’s duplicity emerges, forcing him to de-camp for a second time, Glass in hot and heavy pursuit: “I ain’t afraid to die anymore. I’d done it already”.
You might be forgiven for thinking that Alfonso Cuaron’s hand is involved in The Revenant. There’s the same doggedness in the human struggle and the same mystical, ethereal quality that elevates the action/adventure premise into something more meaningful; although Iñárritu’s piece lacks the whiff of humour that lightened Gravity – forgive the pun. Gleeson is both honest and appealing as the Captain, adding a faint air of charm and gentility to the proceedings.
Locations-wise we’re actually transported to Canada and finally remote snowy regions of Argentina, where the final scene takes place in pristine snow and using the chilling sombreness of natural light, thanks to Lubezki’s short lens wizardry. This is a film that stimulates all the senses: watch, listen, feel and be awed. MT
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