The Revenant

With a string of awards, including three Oscars, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant is easily one of the most moving films of the last few years. Telling the story of explorer Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) who survived a bear attack and abandonment from his men to trek 200 miles in search of revenge, Iñárritu’s vision of the tale is both gripping and confronting in its stark portrayal of the colonial realities. The feeling of the isolated interior is once again brought to life, this time through the harsh and vividly real work of an enigmatic and award winning trio in DiCaprio, Iñárritu and ingenious cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki.

Audiences were wooed by DiCaprio’s performance as frontier explorer and trapper Hugh Glass, who after watching the murder of his son, trudges through the pain for revenge.  The supporting cast, headed up by Tom Hardy as the partially scalped and utterly grizzled Fitzgerald, bring more depth to an already engrossing story. The director certainly made the cast work, with actors and crew braving conditions as bad as -30 degrees to get the shots they needed, filming sometimes only twenty minutes a day in search of purely natural light. But all that hard work paid off, with the movie taking home 3 Oscars at the Academy Awards.

While the real tale of Hugh Glass didn’t take place in a winter landscape, Iñárritu and Lubezki chose to stress that setting. From climbing into a still warm carcass to diving into icy rivers to escape harm, every moment of DiCaprio’s considerable trials are told through a vividly real lens. Lubezki’s work in wide lenses turns a series of scenes into a continuous, gritty chase of horse and foot through landscapes as grim as the tale they’re telling and is perhaps key to the film’s success. This style has earned Lubezki his third Oscar in three years after Birdman and Gravity.

My favourite scene of the movie would have to be the now famous bear attack. It’s nail biting watching DiCaprio being tossed around the clearing as the huge bear has its way with him. Every shot is filmed in natural light and it adds layers to the scene’s breathtaking scenery and grafficly gruesome attack.

The only problem with the movie I’d say is the surplus of snowy landscapes which slows the movie down in stages. Considering the overall idea with the cinematography though, to transport the audience to another place and time, Iñárritu can be forgiven for getting a little over indulgent.

For me this film was an experience and I couldn’t recommend it more, only echoing DiCaprio in his thanks to Chivo for creating such an incredible visual landscape for us to enjoy.

By Sam Kromar