★ ★ ★ ½ ☆
Our constant companion throughout The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñàrritu’s tale of a left-for-dead
frontiersman) is the harsh, wounded breathing of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hugh
Glass. Mutilated in a savage bear attack and abandoned by rival and fellow
pelt-hauler John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), Glass begins an odyssey across the frozen
wastes of the West, seeking vengeance.
The recurring motif of Glass rising after yet another rough
night under the stars perfectly encapsulates the strengths and weaknesses of
the film. Despite the baggage of gobsmacking on-set reports and Oscar fever,
DiCaprio’s performance is startlingly captivating, often rendering one of
Hollywood’s most famous faces unrecognisable behind a beard matted with blood,
mud and snot. As reluctant as I am to cave to award voters’ fawning for
transformative performances, there’s no denial that this portrayal is anything
less than sublime. For what must constitute 80% of the run-time, Leo crawls,
chokes and chews his way across stunning landscapes, at once distracting from and
contributing to the savage backdrop.
And what extraordinary savagery it is, too: not since Gareth
Evan’s follow-up to The Raid has
cinematic pain been so viscerally convincing. A heart-thumping battle sequence followed
closely by the bear brawl set us off at a sprint before grinding to a gritty,
grimy crawl. This is where the problem with our constant focus on Glass comes
into play: a very grumpy man waking up in the woods can only be entertaining so
many times, and the endless repetition of grumbling into scummy beard, crawling a few
paces, sleeping in a horse carcass etc. drags the centre section of the film
into a dangerous gutter. As with Iñàrritu’s Birdman,
the twenty minutes that inspire much watch-checking and fidgeting is the clumsy
ink smudge on an otherwise unsullied work.
Reference to the cinematic frame as a painting is also applicable
to Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography. His usual penchant for long, winding
takes is dotted about the piece, but far more impressive are the moments when
the camera is allowed a moment of stillness, to take in exquisite vistas of looming
mountain ranges and biting, jet-black rivers. Some compositions are so ingeniously
striking that I’m certain no-one has ever imagined anything like them: take,
for example, a shot that places us within wisps of cloud, reminded of our lofty
position above and beyond Glass’s plight as he drifts between the rage of his
waking hours or the calm lucidness of his recurring daydreams.
I’m not entirely convinced that any of these surreal outcroppings
actually have anything important to say about human nature and how far we are
willing to go for the sake of survival, vengeance, or both, but as long as they’re
so wondrously mounted, I’m quite happy to go the distance.
With DiCaprio’s much pined-for Oscar pretty much a dead cert
at this point, recognition of other great turns in the film is massively
lacking to the point of negligence. Hardy has sported roles like this before,
and his overwrought southern accent distracts from the great supporting work
being done by Domhnall Gleeson as Glass’s sympathetic superior officer. Will
Poulter also does well in a role which finally allowed me to see more of his talent
and less of his eyebrows. In the midst of a film so often obsessed with
unwashed hair, soggy fur and torn fabrics, this is not something to be
undervalued. For all the muscular violence, ice-cold tone and stark imagery, the
character-driven elements of The Revenant
are what push it above a mere endurance test and into the realm of
warm-blooded, human storytelling.
