The 'really?' bits in The Revenant

Rating: 6/10 (29 February 2016)

BEWARE – CONTAINS SPOILERS!
Oh my, what a horrifyingly heroic journey Hugh Glass and I have endured. There was power in that there movie, something universal, mighty and indestructible about the human spirit. Intense, involving and beautiful though it was, I was wondering why Hugh had not gone to meet the great trapper in the sky about 20 minutes in. Sometimes it was all so implausible I had an attack of the involuntary giggles. I can suspend my rational mind for the sake of art, and get swept along by the story, but there was just sooo much that would make a Boy Scout with a camping trip or two under his belt want to scratch his head until it was raw.
For starters – all this standing for lengthy periods up to the knees in freezing winter water and keeping on one's wet cold soggy trousers and boots afterwards. If the Fitzgerald had not murdered Hugh's son, such antics would have. I mean how could he even feel his appendages? Good Pawnee genes or not, frostbite, hypothermia or maybe gangrene would surely have done for him. At the other end of the excitement spectrum was the grizzly attack. Even if a helicopter had swooped in and carried Hugh off to the trauma unit, he could hardly have survived it.
Oh Hugh, all that whole body immersion in a freezing, ferociously tumbling river, even if it didn't drown you would have caused your body to seize up with life-threatening shock in seconds. The blood would have rushed from your periphery to your core organs, leaving your brain blank and befuddled. Perhaps that's why your speech stayed unintelligible ad nauseam and you made funny decisions like wearing that fur poncho effort with the fur facing outwards, mountain man style, rather than inwards to warm your perishing core.
The brain hypoxia could explain why you just kept walking and walking with no idea where you were going, just spiritual guidance from his missus (always clad in unseasonably light Laura Ashley hippy attire). OK, she's a spirit, I know. But hats off to you for your uncanny Boy Scout sense of direction. Dib dib.
Oh yeah, and that horse jump over the precipice. Yikes! Incidentally, did all those chasing riders manage to pull up? Really? Hmm. Jeez, Hugh might have had his fall broken by that super-tall pine but for all we know, he could have floated down on a snowflake. His oxygen deprived and now semi-concussed brain is getting madder. And madness makes you strong. So he decides to make like a horse, slice its belly and heave out the massive innards. For a minute, I thought he might dine on them as it's been a while since the raw buffalo liver, but he cosies down for the night in the bloody body cavity stark bollock naked. No jim jams. No hotty. He'd have woken at dawn in this horse shaped freezer with an annoying draught piercing that belly crack straight onto his perishables.
So out he climbs after a good old smelly kip and pulls on his nice dry clothes. How come after a night in the blizzard? I can only put that down to the missus hanging them on some heavenly radiator overnight.
Oh and there are other things. How exactly did the captain manage to make his mount walk forwards, err.. while dead? Why did only two of them pursue Tom Hardy when there was a fort full of men to help? We will never know. One thing's for sure, his lips had their own story to tell, and proved a diverting subplot. Spittle, blubber, bloody spittle, and more spittle. Then scaly, chapped to pieces, and super scaly like a dead fish. Phew! No wonder Powaqa gave him that look of muted disgust as she rode past at the end. It all explains why no one kissed him hello at the fort gates.
I'm sure at the end, his wife was giving him that 'Darling, that's really enough now isn't it?' look. 'Time to come in for a cuppa and Eastenders '. Go to her Hugh and put your feet up.