Impressive or ridiculous?

Rating: 6/10 (30 January 2016)

Watching this movie, I had a hard time deciding if it was impressive or ridiculous. But the moment Leonardo DiCaprio cut open a fresh horse corpse to crawl into it in order to protect himself from the cold, I knew it had to be the latter.
It was a pity really, because after two great scenes at the beginning of the movie, I inclined towards 'impressive'. The Indians attacking Leonardo DiCaprio's camp of fur traders is a wonderful scene. Not only because of its camera work and cinematography, but also because it shows the fur traders as a bunch of scared, clueless losers. The other great scene is the bear attack, which is a truly amazing piece of cinema that makes you wonder how it's done.
But after that, the exciting action scenes make way for endless landscape shots with trees reaching up to the skies, scenes of the wounded DiCaprio crawling through the snow and miraculously surviving in the harsh weather, and dreamlike flash backs of his Indian lover, accompanied by strange whispering sounds.
It became harder and harder to take this film seriously, after DiCaprio's character not only survives the bear attack, but also a fall in an ice cold river, an attack by violent Indians, a snow storm which makes him fall from his horse and collapse, and a jump down a ravine that kills his horse but not him. Also remarkable is that even in a fierce snow storm his companion is able to find dry twigs to make a fire, and that in this remote and sparsely populated territory, groups of people keep bumping into each other.
On the plus side: this is a beautifully filmed movie, with some very intense scenes and a unique view of the way the American wilderness was conquered. But did it have to be that long?