Man vs wild and beauty vs cruelness

Rating: 8/10 (23 March 2016)

The director Alejandro González Iñárritu is back with The Revenant. After the success of Birdman, he returns with the real life story about the frontiersman Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Glass is left for dead in the wild and is forced to fight for his survival and at the same time he swears revenge on those who left him for dead. The Revenant is a renowned film, partly due to the difficulties during the making of it, but also because many feels it is finally time for DiCaprio to get his well deserved Oscar.
The Revenant is incredibly beautiful, shot with only natural light. The film crew practiced the takes during the day, and shot them later when the light was perfect with only a few hours to spare. Iñárritu's demanding style and the different weather conditions, caused according to the rumors, many to leave the film. Perhaps understandable but nevertheless the result is stunning. Iñárritu's long takes and tracking camera movements are consistent. He rather shows us the action with brutal realism, than enforce it with fast cutting. Brutal realism really is the right word for The Revenant. Our eyes are not spared of anything, even if a hand gets cut in half or a person shot through the stomach. It really feels as though we are right in the middle of the film, rather than an audience watching from a platform.
The Revenant is to me a man vs wild film. Other films, such as Deliverence, Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Into the Wild comes to mind. Terrence Malick's nature influences are visible. At the same time as the film is incredibly beautiful, it is also extremely brutal. In one scene we watch enchanting landscape and northern lights, but in the next we also see how cruel nature can be. Next to DiCaprio, Tom Hardy plays an Oscar nominated supporting role as the bad John Fitzgerald. The Revenant is really worth your time and truly something out of the ordinary. Prepare yourselves for a dramatic movie about how man and natures, cruel and beautiful paths cross. I grade it an 8.