Movie Review: Rising against the odds with The Revenant

A wondrous tale of despair and triumph, The Revenant is cinema at its best

This over-the-top wildlife adventure is not one for the faint-hearted. Those who cower at the thought of gory gun battles and bare-hand fighting duels with grizzly bears should look away now. This is torture — alluring and horrifying at the same time — of an unseen kind.

In The Revenant, director Alejandro G Iñárritu has whipped up a grisly, gut-wrenching tale of despair and triumph; a wondrous concerto grosso that pushes human endurance to absurd levels of torment. For someone who generally takes a couple of years between films, The Revenant surprisingly comes just a year after the tremendous success of Birdman, which won Iñárritu heaps of awards, including Best Picture at the Oscars.

Set in the year 1823, Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a legendary frontiersman who is savagely mauled by a bear after having escaped from the grasp of the Arikaras — a native American tribe — and later left for dead by his hunting team, led by Tom Hardy, who plays the icky, rifle-fluttering John Fitzgerald. Fuelled by vengeance, Glass must overcome enormous physical odds to get back at his betrayers. Somewhere in the middle of his unpleasant forest adventure, Glass also loses his son, played by Forrest Goodluck, who is crudely murdered by Fitzgerald.

What unfolds is an extravagant survival-and-revenge tale that is executed with jaw-dropping beauty. We see DiCaprio battle extreme cold, get buried alive, jump off cliffs and slide off treacherous rapids. In one scene, he even devours the pulsating liver of a freshly-slaughtered bison, his hands shuddering and masked in blood. The bear mauling scene, shot using stupefying visual effects, is a thing of rare beauty. Iñárritu captures every scene in mystical grandiosity, moving from thundering sounds to deafening silence with ease. Ryuichi Sakamo and Alva Noto’s background score adds to the pulchritude. And, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is one of the best you’ll ever see.

For someone who talks little during the film, DiCaprio grunts and winces to express his anguish throughout the film. The grunting, though, does make you cringe after a point. Even then, this is a virtuoso performance from an actor operating at the peak of his powers. Hardy’s, in a lot of ways, is a coming-of-age performance. He portrays the role of a ruthless villain effortlessly, putting his bullying persuasive powers to great effect. Towards the end, Glass hunts down Fitzgerald and a bloody battle ensues. Fitzgerald is eventually gunned down and Glass sees a vision of his deceased wife and son.

One minor criticism of film is its script. As a theatrical spectacle, it is rousing and almost incomparable. Yet, in certain parts, the writing lets it down. Iñárritu almost bludgeons — mostly adroitly — the audience into submission, showing scant regard for sophistication. But even then, The Revenant is a spellbinding story of survival. It is cinema at its startling best. For DiCaprio, The Revenant might succeed where The Aviator, Blood Diamond and The Wolf of Wall Street failed. The Oscar red carpet awaits its crown prince.