Chris At The Pictures

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.