A deep and subtle comparison between survival and life

Rating: 10/10 (15 February 2016)

The Revenant, (n. one who has returned, as if from the dead). The Revenant is a beautiful piece of cinematic art. First I will address the quality of the film. This movie is, in my opinion, unmatched by any other film in history in terms of its cinematography (props to Emmanuel Lubezki). Each scene begins, and sometimes ends, with a breathtaking shot of an equally breathtaking landscape. Each shot is essential to the scene's content. The direction is masterful. Inarritu once again managed to outdo himself. Every single scene has a purpose. Every single shot a meaning. Every word a purpose. The acting is superb. I will not buy into the "overdue Oscar" hype. Everyone who has won the Award for best actor deserved it. I will however note that none come close to DiCaprio's performance this year. No one could have brought the emotion that Leo brought to Hugh Glass. With none but a few lines of dialogue, Leo's acting has stunned me like never before. Hardy exemplified evil in a way that I haven't seen since Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, and Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.
On to the film itself. I've seen so many people cite this film as simply a revenge western, a biopic adventure, and a survival movie. While it certainly employs aspects from all three of these, it isn't any one. This film is about life versus survival, man vs. beast, and the relationship between parent and child, love and revenge. It accomplishes its goals just as beautifully as its cinematography accomplishes its trip to the Oscars.
The environment of The Revenant is a violent and unforgiving one. It does not care whether you live or die. This is essential to the films success. The entire film is really a case study of the human spirit. Think about the bear. The bear is in the same environment as Hugh Glass. It faces the same dangers and difficulties. It has to eat, drink, and survive just like Glass. And it will do anything, I repeat, anything, to ensure the safety of itself and its children, including kill. In many ways, Glass is just like the bear. Glass is thrust into the brutal world of The Revenant and is forced to survive. Unlike the bear, protecting his child is not enough. If the bears cub is killed, she will not avenge it. She will not crawl from her grave, half- dead, to find the one who stole her child. Glass is human. There is more to life than survival. And he makes that all too clear. The film emphasizes his struggle to survive, but his struggle to survive is fueled by the struggle to live.
The bear attacked Glass because she saw him as a threat to her cubs. Glass attacked Fitzgerald because he killed his son. The difference between life and survival, in the minutes leading up to the haunting ending, is that life demands vengeance, while survival demands only breathing (although this assertion is strongly challenged in the last 15 seconds of the movie.)
All throughout the movie, Glass is portrayed as a bear-like creature. He eats raw buffalo, he grabs fish out of the river and rips into them, he sleeps naked inside an animal carcass. But why? To survive? No, he should have died. By all odds, he would have died. Why didn't he? Because the need to live, not survive, live, drove him out of his grave.
The subplot serves to further reinforce the strength of a parent- child relationship. The Indian chief will stop short of nothing to find his missing daughter. He slaughters hoards of people to find what was taken from him.
The ending. The seemingly unanswered question is this: was Glass staring emptily into the camera because he had not killed Fitz, but rather allowed his fate to be decided by the chief, or was it because he had fulfilled his quest for vengeance and felt no satisfaction? I choose to believe the latter, that after crushing death to find life, and completing his mission, he felt no satisfaction. Life, is more than revenge. His son was gone, he needed to accept this. This point is further reinforced by the grateful nod of the chief and his daughter as they ride past. The chief sought life, and found his daughter. He found life. Glass found revenge. He thought he was finding life, but he only found empty satisfaction. Why did his wife walk away form him at the end? Was she approving or disapproving of his actions? Throughout the movie, her words drove him forward, but, now that he reached his destination, she no longer is there to drive him. I see this as, "You've completed your mission. But, as Fitz said "Ain't nothing gonna bring him back". What will you do now? Will you succumb to death? Or will you truly find life?" That question rung in my head for the seconds of blackness following his empty and seemingly hopeless stare, and has rung for days after the credits rolled.