A weird detachment between style, form, and story

Rating: 5/10 (3 August 2018)

I am surprised how much I didn't like this.
I didn't even like the photography. Too many 360° pans and jumping off cliffs that make the camera a character, or at least felt very out of place in the setting (when they were very reasonable when used in Gravity, for example).
Some great acting, some amazing VFX, but... no story. I mean sure there's a story, but somehow one that was so fantastical, so remote from the actions of the characters that I didn't ever connect the two so didn't feel any emotional attachment to it.
Even the bear scene was the tour-de-force of film-making that everyone says while also making me have absolutely no concern for Glass.
Take the opening attack, and compare it to the attack on the convoy leaving the fort in Last of the Mohicans. The latter gives you a much better sense of the geography of the action, even when they go off to the river and are chased down; this all gives the scene a distinct sense of peril. The characters might not make it.
Not so in The Revenant. Even with the quite common chance of death, as people start dropping from arrows and hatchets, it all feels remote, cold, isolated. And confusing. Warriors coming from off the frame to kill someone doesn't seem frightening, so much as confusing.