Visual experience like no other

Rating: 10/10 (26 December 2015)

I have no intention repeating what other reviewers have said about this film, but I do want to chime in with an often overlooked aspect of The Revenant - cinematography.
First of all, the whole film is shot on digital 65mm Arri camera with not a single medium or telephoto lens. Everything is shot with wide angle lenses and the framing is done basically by moving the camera either further away or very, very close to the main actors.
This super-close framing combined with wide angle lenses creates an incredible immersive effect, where you simply cannot help but physically feel the cold, the water, the dirt, the blood splatter, the nature. Many times during the movie the lens itself gets splashed in blood or dirt, it fogs up from the breath of the protagonists or even gets kicked during fight scenes. Also, the faces are so close they get distorted from the wide-angle lenses, which in turn creates an even greater effect of honesty. There are no masterfully lit beauty shots here. Instead, it's all very, very, very rough and very real.
Also, the movement of the camera is incredible. The huge sweeping 360-degree vistas right in the middle of massive combat scenes create the effect of the viewer being "in the middle of action", it is almost as if you're turning your head to look around. The fact that the whole movie is made with only natural light is an interesting factoid, but it's important because the DoP Emmanuael Lubezki suddenly isn't confined in his framing by where the artificial lights are placed. He's free to move any where and any way he wants and that sense of liberty is definitively something we don't get to see very often.
Every one of these visual aspects add a new layer of authenticity and what you end up with is an incredible movie that can almost be described as "an experience". It's a ride that's hard to forget and is certainly something that anyone interested in film-making is going to want to take a good, hard look into.