Man is the cruelest animal…. It seems the whole cast and crew of The Revenant has taken this kernel of Nietzscheian knowledge to heart in crafting the recent Golden Globe winning and Oscar nominated film.
Despite the fact that the movie has mostly been promoted around the fact that bears are cruel animals, at its core The Revenant is about the tough fur traders who braved the American frontier and sometimes each other just to make a living.
Front and center of the company portrayed in this film is the almost mythical Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio). Glass, a master of the terrain, however has enemies on the trail. Chief among them, a brutish trapper named Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) who wants to dispatch Glass and his half-indigenous son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), after the company is prayed upon in an early and devastatingly amazing sequence by the Arikara tribe.
Once on the run from the tribe, Glass is attacked by a mama bear in one of the most harrowing sequences in recent movie history. The question then becomes what to do of Glass?
Fitzgerald volunteers to hang back with Hawk until he slips quietly into death. But as Glass refuses to go, Fitzgerald takes matters into his own hands: killing Hawk and burying Glass alive.
The rest of the movie jumps into somewhat familiar territory as Glass trudges across what seems like miles of harsh wilderness to get back to civilization and go after the man who killed his son. Fresh off his Oscar win for Birdman: Or the Incredible Virtue of Ignorance, director and co-writer Alejandro G. Innaritu has decided to follow that gutsy movie with one that seems to up the ante.
Filmed in the Canadian wilderness and the mountains of Argentina, Innaritu and director of photography Emmanuel Lubeski decided to shoot the movie using only natural light, thus capturing some of the most captivating landscapes and racking up a massive budget for Fox Studios.
However beautiful the landscapes, there are times where Innaritu seems almost too concerned with natural beauty and photography than with the story at hand. These moments, at times, are an unwelcomed test of the audience’s patience. I noticed many theater members getting antsy and disinterested every time one of these sequences (or one of the film’s many dream sequences) would begin.
That being said, the captivating and brutal nature of the story and the characters is enough for me to whole-heartedly recommend The Revenant. DiCaprio is extremely captivating in a performance that is largely non-verbal.
For an actor who is known for his good looks, easy charm and general likeable leading man qualities, this film is an interesting departure and just another notch in this great actor’s belt. With his performance as Fitzgerald, Hardy continues to solidify his position as one of the great character actors of our time.
This time around, Hardy has disguised his voice in a gruff and almost inaudible tone that makes Fitzgerald sound like a real frontiersman who has seen his fair share of trouble. Though his role is somewhat limited, I would say we could officially call 2015 the year of Domhnall Gleeson.
Gleeson – who last year appeared in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ex Machina, Brooklyn and this end of 2015 entry – plays with great efficiency the company’s ill-equipped captain trying to do the right thing in a time and place where that isn’t always the smartest thing to do.
It’s an engrossing time at the movies if you can be patient through a few of Innaritu’s over-artistic digressions. If you want to feel immersed in a world of pain, perseverance and the bitter cold then The Revenant will supply you with all the Jack London/Joseph Conrad-esque thrills that you seek.
Brian Laughran
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