Review // The Revenant

[projekktor id=’22631′]

The American frontier has never looked as savage and unforgiving as it does in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant. Filmed in the remote Alberta wilderness using only natural light, the newest film from the acclaimed Mexican director made headlines for a reportedly difficult production, going over budget and exposing cast and crew to bitter conditions. Despite the hardships, or perhaps because of them, the result is a brutal tale of survival and revenge filled with enough frontier savagery to make Cormac McCarthy blush.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass, a fur trapper and frontiersman acting as guide to Captain Andrew Henry (Domnhall Gleeson), who is leading an expedition up the Missouri River. The only men in the party with a knowledge of this untouched wilderness, Glass and his half-native son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) become all the more important when the party is attacked by Arikara warriors and forced to flee into the uncharted wilderness on foot. Much to the chagrin of the scarred and scowling John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the party opts to stash their furs in the woods, sacrificing a lucrative payday in order to escape with their lives. When Glass is gravely wounded by a grizzly bear (one of the year’s most genuinely terrifying scenes), Fitzgerald and the young Mr. Bridger (Will Poulter) are left behind to see him through his last days. However, after an act of treachery by Fitzgerald, the men desert the helpless Glass to a cold and lonely death.

This is the newest in a string of fantastic outings by the partnership of Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and the visuals are once again superb, capturing the harsh severity of the Canadian wilderness in a way which emphasizes both its beauty and isolation. Exposure takes on multiple meanings for the photographer here. Though the pair’s signature long and seemingly-impossible takes are still on full display, they are less showy than we’ve seen in films like Birdman and Gravity, and feel natural and appropriate when used. A desperate escape by Glass on the back of a stolen horse leaves you wondering why anyone would ever choose to cut during such a scene. The film’s opening ambush surrounds you with whizzing arrows and panicked horses, emphasizing the fear and helplessness of its characters, and sucking you into the story almost instantly.

Matching the intensity and technical prowess of the filmmaking are the performances by the lead actors. Leonardo DiCaprio is at the centre of the Oscar conversation for his portrayal of Glass, and rightfully so. The veteran actor has never looked as dirty or ravaged as he does in The Revenant, moaning and clawing his way across the landscape like the lead in some frontier passion play. Tom Hardy is fantastic as the half-scalped Judas whose fate is sealed as soon as Glass pulls himself from his shallow grave. Will Poulter and Domnhall Gleeson provide powerful supporting performances, with the latter closing off one of the most exceptional years by a single actor in recent memory.

More notable than the human concerns of revenge and survival however, is the film’s true reverence for a long gone American frontier. Though set less than 200 years ago, the landscape feels prehistoric. Herds of buffalo part like ocean waves as Glass walks among them. When the camera tilts up to follow towering birch trees reaching towards the grey skies, they sway and creak as if propelled by the breath of some immense creature just over the hills. That creature, we imagine, is the slow westward creep of the white man, an unstoppable force that scars the landscape through which Glass wanders. However unlike other frontier films (Dances With Wolves comes to mind) this primal land has no patience for sentiment. Though burned out native villages and towering pyramids of buffalo skulls act as eery and poetic totems of inevitable destruction, they’re presented without comment. This is a land where beings are still beholden to nature’s whims, causing us to wonder at the meaningless concerns of one man against a country so vast and indifferent.

Iñárritu has created a harrowing adventure that seems to ask deep and existential questions simply by the power of its visuals. What those questions are, well, that’s for you to decide. The filmmakers opted to deviate from Glass’s real story for a more conventionally satisfying ending, and I wonder if adhering to the true story of Glass’s revenge (a far less satisfying one) may have matched the film’s themes of helplessness a little better. However this is just minor speculation and likely would have made The Revenant a far more frustrating experience. After a troubled shoot the filmmakers probably needed some catharsis. Luckily for them all that hardship is right up on the screen. The perseverance of a film crew who retire each night to heated trailers is, after all, nothing compared to the trials of the real life Hugh Glass, and the demand for visual authenticity feels like the only appropriate way of telling his story. No doubt DiCaprio and company will forget all about their frozen toes when they walk the red carpet this February.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.