A Heart Racing Extravaganza

Rating: 8/10 (10 February 2016)

I don't know if I've ever wished for a movie to end so many times that I enjoyed as much as Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's newest outing The Revenant (2015). Fresh off an Oscar with Birdman (2014), Inarritu continues his trend of a natural unstoppable force constantly pressing throughout his films. A force so strong that it won't even allow us to breathe. It is also worth mentioning the progression from Birdman, a dark comedy mostly centered around the ways which we present ourselves to others, and The Revenant, which replaces all of the dialogue in Birdman with brutal moment after brutal moment.
The films structure calls to mind thoughts of Gravity (Cuaron, 2013) lying mostly on its protagonist dealing with just about every single thing that could go wrong going wrong, initiating with the now infamous bear scene. While Gravity seemed to replace interesting story telling with these humongous set pieces, The Revenant uses these constant natural disasters to help supplement the spiritual journey that Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) endeavors. In an interview with Variety, the film's director spoke heavily about the two tiers that the story revolves around.
Being both beautiful and completely brutal, this film will rip into your mind and leave you with mental and emotional scars all too similar to that of the main character. Inarritu collaborates again with Birdman cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, who once again has proved he is an absolute geniuses with the camera. Whether he is a 'mad' genius is up for debate. The themes of the unbreakable human spirit in the film seem to mirror the production perfectly. Shot in entirely natural light, sometimes only shooting for an hour a day to find the perfect light, the film went through tremendous difficulties to perfect Lubezki and Inarritu's vision, and it pays off marvelously .
While the image is completely breathtaking, The Revenant seems to have its weakest aspect lying within the screenplay itself. I by no means am saying that having little dialogue hurts the film in any way, in fact it enhances it, but when there is so little dialogue when it arrives it needs to be cutting and important, and most importantly interesting. Now the dialogue by no means is boring, but it does not reach the same peaks as the technical aspects of this film.
As relentless as this film is, it seems as if this was an earlier cut of the film. By that, I mean that it seemed as though there was still needless moments that only heightened tension for a moment but ended up not contributing to the overall necessity of the movie. I never got bored, but there were certainly moments where I thought to myself 'alright, this needs to pick up the pace!' When every minute feels like three, because the pain is so real, it's hard to sit through any moments that seem redundant.
The Revenant is brutal, gut wrenching, and painful, yet beautiful and endearing. It was probably the most visceral film of the 2015 season.