A beautiful and brutally overwhelming savagery

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2016)

Just a year after impressing film fans across the world with big-small scaled existential theater story of Birdman, award-winning director Alejandro G. Iñárritu returns to the big screen with 12-time Oscar nominee The Revenant. To say that The Revenant is something different would be an understatement. Here, the sometimes claustrophobic hallways of the New York Theatre is replaced by the wide open fields of nature in North America in the early 19th century. And with that, let me stop the comparisons and look at The Revenant as the unique piece of cinema history that it surely will become.
Storywise we are served a rather simple story about redemption, survival and savagery in the meeting of cultures with the meeting between white frontiersmen and North American native Indians. If you think this backdrop sounds familiar, then you are right. Despite it being told with Iñárritu's sense for detail and with fierce brutality, the story might very well be the film's weakest asset. The middle section drags on a bit too long and it is balancing on the edge of simply becoming an "oh what can we expose Leo to now" story. They are one more extreme situation away from crossing this line before a thrilling and extremely satisfying third half takes over the action!
What the film's story doesn't deliver, the cinematography sure does. Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki is surely the guy to follow right now; in 2013 he placed us in space with Sandra Bullock with Gravity, in 2014 he made us follow every step taken in Birdman, and now he takes us to the open plains, narrow forests and brutal struggles of Leonardo DiCaprio's Hugh Glass in The Revenant. His mix of picture perfect nature scopes and extreme close-ups of fights and heavy breaths combined with his almost arrogantly perfect use of natural lighting makes the film an absolute joy to behold! Quite simply one of the most beautifully filmed films I have ever seen. It will be difficult to look beyond Chivo for the third year in a row when the Oscar for best cinematography is awarded in a month from now. However, the constant use of blood, water and breath hitting the lens ended up as more of a distracting gimmick in my eyes reminding me of the fact (that you always forget) that all of this is carefully staged artistry and not the raw brutality of nature that you are witnessing. With that in mind, my hopes are still high for Roger Deakins' work in Sicario to be awarded.
As Hugh Glass, Leonardo DiCaprio groans, sweats, bleeds and yells his way towards his long-awaited Oscar for best actor. It is a tour de force performance displaying the sheer pain and unstoppable desire for redemption and survival in every single movement, sound or breath made by him during the full 150 minutes running time. Is it the best performance of his career? Perhaps not. Will he win the Oscar this year? Quite possibly yes! It simply seems to be his year with no other real standout performance of the year. In the supporting roles Tom Hardy and perhaps especially Domhnall Gleeson continues to establish themselves as some of the most exciting still-to-be-super-star-actors in Hollywood right now (if they hadn't done that already). Tom Hardy is an explosion of pent up anger, fear and brutality waiting to go off in a constantly imminent eruption and he steals the show every single time he is in the frame! Gleeson, as the his-father-bought-him-the-title-captain of the cavalry, is really growing into a forceful actor with a presence that jumps off the screen with surprising power and relevance.
When all is said and done, though, more than anything The Revenant is a showcase of what we are able to achieve technically today. From the mind-blowing, awe-inspiring cinematography to the frighteningly life-like animations of a certain bear, this feels like good friends Iñárritu and Lubezki letting us all know just how ground-breaking, hard-working and inspiringly devoted pioneers of the cinematic universe they are. Luckily for them they shoot with anything but blanks, and as such they succeed in having you captured and mesmerised despite a quite trivial story. Best film of the year? That I am not sure of. Most impressive production of the year? Without a doubt and probably of the last couple of years as well. A film that will serve as reference for our technological development for many, many years.