The Revenant (2016) Review

By: Kameron McBride

Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu won many directorial awards for last year's Birdman. I suspect that a lot of that film's popularity is based off the idea that Birdman is by far the most palatable of Iñárritu's films. Most of the time he deals in only bleak images and struggling heroes. Birdman was a rare (sort-of) beam of hope, that had the most overt aesthetic gimmick that Iñárritu has pulled by making it seem as though the film is done in one long take. 

The Revenant is not Birdman. 

In a lot of ways it's the absolute perfect film for this time of year. A bleak, grueling, existential grind that doesn't bring nearly the kind of satisfaction at the end of its revenge narrative would suggest. 

The Revenant follows Hugh Glass (Leonardo Dicaprio) a guide who is helping a group of fur trappers navigate the wild land of the Dakotas in 1823. Among the trappers is John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) a wild man who wears a rag to cover his partially scalped head. While scouting ahead Glass is mauled by a female grizzly bear defending her young cubs. Fitzgerald ultimately leaves Glass buried for dead, stabbing Glass' son to death before leaving.

Glass survives and digs himself out, beginning a chase to exact revenge on Fitzgerald. 

The plot itself isn't too terribly complicated, being standard revenge fare for the most part, but the single-minded determination of Glass is captured in such an organic way that it feel fresher than it probably should. There are no long speeches about how important his son was to him or the feeling of being beat over the head by his mourning, just the images of Glass set against a harsh landscape. 

It feels as if Glass' struggles and suffering pale in comparison to the cruelness of the world he inhabits. Suffering and random acts of violence are commonplace in The Revenant. This is never more apparent than a chain of events started by the death of a buffalo: one member of a pack is picked off by a pack of wolves, who descend upon him and tear him to pieces before they too are killed by an Indian hunter, who claims the buffalo meat. While eating the meat (raw) with Glass the hunter claims that "revenge is in the creator's hands." The hunter then meets his doom by way of a pack of French fur trappers hanging him from a tree with a sign on his body reading "We are all savages."

This appears to be the crux of the film, that the world is unpredictably cruel yet the reactions to this cruelness come to the same end: death and misery. The buffalo and Indian hunter both represent parts of the Americas that are going through a disproportionate amount of suffering at the time, yet Glass is the man we follow on his path to revenge. If revenge truly is in the creator's hands then he doesn't care for karma or fairness, only in the harsh violence that permeates the world of The Revenant. Revenge is not justice in this world, it only gives brief meaning to the lives of those that inhabit it. 

The Revenant is almost predictably beautiful in its aesthetic. Emmanuel Lunezki (who's worked with Iñárritu before, along with Alfonso Cuaron and Terrence Malick) does a great job catching the wild, unrelenting spirit of the American landscapes that tell the story even when there are stretches of fifteen or more minutes without any dialogue. 

It goes without saying that both Hardy and Dicaprio are phenomenal. A lot has been made of Dicaprio's commitment to this role and the kind of trials he went through during filming; it all should be worth it, as I'm not sure how he can't win an Oscar on this go round. Hardy brings his usual intensity and ability for facial expression to a role that seems tailor made to his acting presence. 

In The Revenant Iñárritu has crafted a phenomenal tone poem. An existential picture that is bleak, unforgiving and unrelentingly beautiful. This is not a movie for the faint of heart or for warmth of soul but is still an incredible piece of art.