A film with Oscar written all over it

Rating: Null/10 (6 February 2016)

If all you knew about a film was its title, then this one would be rivalled in obscurity only by "Sicario". In the latter case, the word was explained at the opening of the movie; in this case, the viewer is left to infer the meaning from the narrative. A revenant is a person who returns, especially from the dead, and the term comes from a French word for ghost. In this case, the eponymous returner is tracker Hugh Glass (a stunning performance from Leonard Di Caprio) and screenwriter Mark L Smith has worked partly from the true story of an early 19th century Wyoming mountain man and party from a 2002 novel by Michael Punke. In a minimalist script, there is no back story or exposition - we are straight into the action - and there are long periods of no dialogue at all.
This is a genuinely international work. The lead star is American, of course, but the other three major roles are filled in accomplished style by actors from the British Isles - Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, and Will Poulter - although all four are barely recognisable under so much facial hair. Director Alejandro González Iñ árritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki - who worked together on "Birdman" - are both Mexican. And the outdoor locations themselves - breathtakingly shot in natural light with clever camera angles - were in Canada and Argentina.
There is a rare physicality to this brilliant movie-making as the viewer goes through the life-threatening ordeals endured by Glass, whether the threat comes from native tribes, fellow fur trappers, wild animals, or 'just' the terrain and climate. The work has become best-known for the scene involving a bear attack but I was even more gripped by another sequence in which Glass is invited simply to blink. The last time I felt so exhausted at the end of a film was "Touching The Void".