A Visual Wonder

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2018)

This was a review I wrote back in early 2016 for a class project, so this was before Leo won his Oscar.
The Revenant is the movie many say is finally going to get Leonardo DiCaprio his long deserved Best Actor Oscar. Inspired by true events and directed by Academy Award winner Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), this Action/Drama film has received Oscar nominations for acting, cinematography, editing and many more categories. But does it live up to all of the critical attention it's getting?
The movie starts out with a panning shot of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) and his son Hawk (Forest Goodluck) in a flashback in which his deceased Indian wife is encouraging him to keep fighting onward. The film then cuts to a continuous shot of Glass and some of his regiment hunting for food for their camp in unsettled territory. While they are gone, a hostile clan of Indians attacks their camp, killing around 30 of Glass's men. The survivors retreat to the river and escape on their boat, only to abandon it in an attempt to mislead the pursuing warriors. Things take a turn for the worse when Glass gets mauled by a bear and is near death. John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) echoes the sentiments of many who believe they should leave Glass behind to increase their odds of survival. But when money is offered by one of the regiment commanders to stay with Glass until he is able to move, Fitzgerald volunteers along with Bridges (Will Poulter) and Hawk. Eventually Fitzgerald gets tired of baby sitting and tries to kill Glass, but ends up killing Hawk instead. He lies to Bridges about Indians approaching and they both leave Glass for dead. Abandoned, Glass (with the help of the voice of his dead wife) picks himself up, conquers the elements and gets back to his camp. The remainder of this epic film recounts his perilous tale of survival.
Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic, Inception) delivers one of the best performances of his career, playing Hugh Glass, a man whose wife was killed by soldiers during a raid. In a good eighty percent of the film Glass is mute due to a bear attack in which his vocal cords were damaged. Unable to speak, he communicates an incredible array of emotion through his facial expressions and actions. There's one scene when he is strapped to a plank of wood, still recovering from his wounds and Fitzgerald wants to kill him, but Hawk saves him. Fitzgerald then stabs Hawk and Glass is upset to the point of foaming at the mouth out of anger at Fitzgerald for killing his only son. In another scene Glass is cautiously approaching an Indian from his wife's tribe. When the Indian points his weapon at him, he immediately falls and successfully explains that he is injured and needs help using body language. DiCaprio has come a long way from the pretty boy he played in Titanic, and while this isn't my personal favorite Leonardo DiCaprio movie, his ability to convey complex emotions and communicate without dialogue definitely makes this performance Oscar worthy. I hope he finally gets it.
Tom Hardy (The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max: Fury Road) plays the antagonist in this movie, and is an extremely unlikable, selfish jerk throughout the film. He is constantly finding ways to take advantage of others for personal gain. He shows this best in one scene where he and Bridges are traveling back to the camp to get their reward for staying behind. Bridges asks Fitzgerald, at gunpoint, if he lied to him about leaving Glass because of incoming Indians and Fitzgerald says yes. Bridges isn't the bravest or the smartest of men, and is unaware that his gun isn't loaded. Fitzgerald, however, knows the gun is not loaded and wrestles it from Bridges. He points it at Bridges, telling him to stay quiet about the lie. In classic villain fashion, he says "the Lord giveth and taketh" and pulls the trigger. Bridges of course is OK, but has received the message loud and clear. At the end of the film Fitzgerald in his final act of cowardliness, tries to kill Glass to cover up his lies and treasonous acts. It was a hard fought battle but in the end, Fitzgerald bites the bullet, or in this case, the arrow. An excellent performance overall by this multi-talented actor who should be a contender for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Alejandro González Iñárritu hired Emmanuel Lubeski for the cinematography, and it is some of the best I've ever seen. He makes some interesting choices like multiple continuous, one take shots. The best example is when DiCaprio gets attacked by the bear. The way they shot it in one take is absolutely outstanding. Just when you think they are going to cut away to another angle, they stay with the same shot throughout the entire scene, which makes it even more tense than it already is. Another technique Lubeski used a lot was close ups on the characters' faces. Probably the most intense part of the film, aside from the bear attack, is the final fight between Glass and Fitzgerald, which is mostly done in one take. The way they zoom in on the battle made me super tense from the expressions on their faces as they were dueling to the death. He also shows incredible scenery in many shots. We soak up mountains, sky, horizon, and forests thanks to Lubeski's glorious camera work. I would not be surprised if he won the Oscar for Best Cinematography; this guy know how to make scenes visually memorable.
The soundtrack was created by Alva Noto and Ryûichi Sakamoto, two names I have not seen before. They do a good job setting the scene by the use and lack of use of background music. In the beginning of the film when the Indians are invading Glass's camp, the music drowns out the battle sounds, setting up the somber mood of the lives being lost as Glass and his men retreat to their boat on the shore. Probably my favorite instance of where they don't have any music is the scene where the bear mauls Glass. The absence of the music make the scene extremely tense since were are forced to listen to the agonizing screams of Glass and the grunts of the bear without anything to soften or detract from those sounds. The music finally comes back in at the very end of the scene when Glass and the bear fall down the hill and the bear lands on him and both lay motionless. I will definitely keep my ears open next time I go see a film with these two as the film composers.
Of course, movies are not perfect, and there are a few nitpicks that I have with the film. The first one is in the scene where Glass is still recovering from his bear attack and some hostile Indians find him near a stream. He gets away by swimming. He can hardly walk without collapsing, so how can he swim as fast as he did away from the Indians? The current helped a bit but there were sections of the river that were calm and the Indians were shooting him with arrows. One or two should of hit him. Another issue comes up after Glass rescues an Indian girl from a rapist and flees from the group the rapist is from. He then falls off a cliff into a tall tree while his horse falls all the way down and dies on impact. In the next shot Glass looks fine except for having a bit of difficulty walking. This makes little sense since he was critically injured earlier in the film and is still not one hundred percent back to full health. And finally, immediately after the fall, a snowstorm hits, and Glass cuts out the organs of his dead horse, goes inside for warmth (much like Luke in Star Wars Episode V) and survives the night inside the horse buck naked. I would think that would lead to a faster death by frostbite, but I'm no expert. It just left me confused and a little skeptical. These must have been the embellishments to the "inspired by actual events". There were some instances where an off-camera character's voice sounded a bit odd, like 2 of the same person was speaking at the same time, but that only happened a few times. Even the best of films can have a few small flaws.
Overall, The Revenant is one of the best movies of 2015, which says a lot coming from a year that produced films like Star Wars, Mad Max and Inside Out. The acting is great, the chemistry between the actors is believable, the cinematography is some of the best I have ever seen, and the music makes the scenes memorable. It definitely deserves a least a few awards, one for the cinematography and one for Leonardo DiCaprio for pulling off an excellent performance of a character that had to be very difficult to portray. I would recommend this film to anyone who is a fan of DiCaprio, great camera work and intense survival films.