Birdman was Alejandro Gonzalez Iñaritu's love affair, The Revenant is his marriage

Rating: 9/10 (28 March 2016)

Birdman was Alejandro Gonzalez Iñaritu's love affair, The Revenant is his marriage. In fact, this 2 and a half hour epic feels like it it's bound to leave a signature mark on the filmography this 21st century director genius will leave behind him. Paired with an incredibly dedicated and intriguing performance by Leonardo DiCaprio, this visceral experience that takes place in the Louisiana territory in 19th century United States of America provides the main backdrop for the film. The film's greatest advantage is Iñaritu's innovative and characteristic use of camera – one that allows you to experience a story not through the cinema's seat looking at a picture screen, but through the bystander traveller position the director creates. Through his highly-intimate at times, while panoramic and aerial at other times style of filming, Iñaritu tells a story in a different way than the more commonly observed style of storytelling seen in American cinema. The story of the Revenant is one mainly told through the various emotions and mental experiences our lead character goes through. Instead of the director creating a narrative to explain Glass' past, he takes you into the mind-set of this man, the dreams he sees when he closes his eyes, ones that would fuel his spirit and give him resilience. Glass embodies the character of an incredibly courageous and persevering father, one that had to face incredible tragedy and misgivings in his life, and one that ultimately comes face to face with the ultimate tragedy: losing his son, the last remaining member of the loving family he once had. Through this movie, the audience experiences the vast array of emotions that a person can go through when pushed to the edge, like vengeance, and how when faced with inexplicable and unbearable sorrow, this notion alone can give you the strength to continue surviving. There is a deep hatred that is created when someone kills the one you love so much, and this hatred, and need to avenge his son's murder is what ultimately drives the actions of the character. We are taken along to get to see this man getting stronger and stronger , following his wife's advice, one he'd always give his son: When there is a storm, and you stand in front of a tree, if you look at its branches, you swear it will fall, But if you watch the trunk, you will see it's stability. We feel the intense pain seen through his eyes when he first sees his dead son, we feel his desire to remain alive every time he hears his wife's voice. The brief moments of bliss amongst him and the native, the kindness given by a stranger considered the 'enemy', one that was spared by his own men. We experience this human rise from that crippling body and finally let go of that potent hatred and let his prey's fate rest in the hands of god, the hands of nature. It is a story with such profound impact, one so rarely seen through this current list of already existing and simplistic forms of storytelling that so often feel unattached. Alejandro doesn't attempt to explain a story, he becomes the story, and together with the breath-taking cinematography of Chino, and DiCaprio's stellar performance, he allows us to not just listen to a story, but to experience a story, and become a part of it.