The Revenant review

by Luke Jones

Is this Leo’s year? Will Alejandro G Iñárritu add to last year’s Best Director win? Is Emmanuel Lubezki going to make it another year of Cinematography heartbreak for Roger Deakins? There’s so much award talk around the Revenant that it’s easy to forget the film in the middle. Luckily it’s a pretty decent offering, a B-movie revenge flick given A-list status by the considerable talents of those involved.

The Revenant’s production has already taken its place among other troubled nature-based productions such as Deliverance and Fitzcarraldo. Stories of the budget running over, of costly moves from Canada to Argentina and of crewmembers openly revolting at the harsh conditions have been forthcoming over the past year. Yet the result is an undeniably beautiful creation, given extra weight and tactility by the knowledge that it was, mostly, shot in camera using natural light. It’s early to say, but I’ll be surprised if there’s a more visceral experience in cinemas in 2016.

Loosely based on true story, at its most basic the Revenant is the story of a man driven by revenge to hunt down those who done him wrong. Tom Hardy gives good villain, his John Fitzgerald another addition to his mumbly CV. Will Poulter continues to be the best thing in every scene he’s in. Domhnall Gleeson is surely due a nap after this, The Force Awakens, Brooklyn and Ex Machina in the last year. But this is Leo’s film, his character’s tribulations matched by the extraordinary trials that DiCaprio put himself through. It’s effective, his character Hugh Glass becoming as much a force of nature as the trees and mountains around him. It’s also wonderfully physical, with little dialogue needed to sell Glass’ mental state. But is it acting? After all, when you’re eating raw bison liver it’s not a stretch to look like someone eating raw bison liver. Ditto for climbing out of a freezing cold river. It feels like Leo’s year, his turn, but for my money his best performance remains the magnetically evil Jordan Belfort in Wolf of Wall Street.

It will be hard to argue if Iñárritu walks away with a little golden man. His trademark long camera takes thrust you into the centre of the action, whether its an attack by native Americans or a heart-in-mouth escape from French traders. A mano-a-mano tussle late on is probably the best representation of the clumsy brutality of a fight since Colin Firth did Hugh Grant at the end of Bridget Jones’ Diary. If Iñárritu’s tendency for pretentiousness kicks in from time to time (the last shot is the definition of auteur wankery) he makes up for it with some brilliantly assured action cinema. The bear attack will get a lot of attention, and for good reason; despite looking like a rubbery CGI bear you will wince at every bite and rake of claw.

I’m not even going to talk about Lubezki’s shooting; suffice it to say you could take any still from this film and it would be a contender for National Geographic’s nature shot of the year. MVP has to go to Supervising Sound Editor and Sound Designer Martín Hernández, for creating a soundscape that justifies paying half a day’s wage to find the cinema with the best sound system available. Every drop of water, every arrow, every lip-smacking mouthful of bison liver… it’s both the most tranquil and most brutal headspace podcast you’ll ever listen to.

I left the Revenant two days ago inclined to dislike it. I like my B-movies lean and mean, not two and a half hours long with more nature shots than a photographer on a nudist beach. But somehow, not unlike its protagonist, it’s stayed with me. For all its epic majesty, the Revenant is a curiously intimate film. It wants to reach out of the screen, make you feel the cold, the dirt, the smells of the old frontier. In return, it deserves to feel what a few of those Oscar statuettes feel like.