Message of The Revenant? (Contains several spoilers throughout the text!)

Rating: 5/10 (26 January 2016)

I finished watching this film with mixed feelings. I loved its mood and aesthetics and I cannot get it out of my mind. Yet I did not like the film itself and I will explain why in the following.
First of all, the most positively striking aspect of the film is its cinematography. Emmanuel Lubezki's style is so extraordinary and recognisable in other films as well, it is a whole different feeling to watch. On one hand it increases identification with the characters but it is also very smooth, flowing and takes you deeper into the action without you even noticing it at first. My favourite example is the vapour of breath on the camera. The other aspect I loved was sound, including music. The score turns certain scenes that lack emotion in image into a mood, a feeling itself, which is quite amazing as not many composers achieve this aim. Also sometimes you can faintly hear a tone, not a real melody and still that one tone causes extreme tension. Back to the sound itself, it is very visual and authentic, meaning you could watch many scenes, mostly the violent ones with your eyes shut and the sound would just perfectly tell you what is happening.
Whether that is a good thing or not is subjective. It may have been a means to create realism but then again - sometimes sound or image, but not both, is perfectly enough. Personally, I thought the violence in The Revenant was downright disgusting and even though it depicts the main character's suffering, it is just too much, too blatant, seemed too meant for the effect of luridness. (SPOILER:) E.g. taking shelter in a horse (!). I was probably just blind to that symbolism.
SPOILERS AHEAD: As so many people are expecting DiCaprio to get an Oscar for his performance in The Revenant, this being his fifth nomination, I was paying attention to that as well. DiCaprio has a very unlucky role here - it is at least the third time the character he is playing is having visions of a tragically deceased wife (Shutter Island, Inception, ...) - and the rest of the time his character, Glass, is dying and/or suffering. While he portrays that extraordinarily well, what I mean to say is, the character itself is rather stoic, not one that is ambiguous. He is fighting for his life, but where is the character development or dilemma etc?
The mood of the film itself is fascinating, as said earlier, supported by the score that is very faint at certain times and heavy in other scenes. The film is a constant shift between contemplation and violence, sometimes even intertwining. The probably most memorable scene depicting this is the one in which Glass (delirious) is standing in front of a devastated church, with its bell ringing from the wind; a piece of Christian culture, slowly taken over by nature with trees growing between the stones. There, he suddenly sees his deceased son who is slowly approaching him and then hugs him. Glass cries and in the next shot you see him hugging one of the trees. This scene enhances such an aesthetically beautiful balance between life and death, culture and nature, but also the tension of the setting, with the two cultures fighting each other, one built on Christianity and art, the other living in and with nature. The scene depicts grief and revives the symbolism of the tree stretching throughout the entire film - all in all, it had a very deep impact on me.
At last, I am trying to figure out what this film is trying to tell me. It depicts both mankind, both nature, in their ways; both can be very cruel and very kind. My concern is something Fitzgerald utters near the end - that Glass's journey, from the point he is left alone, is all about revenge. He has nothing to lose or to go for but to avenge the murder of his son. Yes, he does say in the end that it is not up to him to take revenge, but up to God. He does change his mind about killing Fitzgerald, as the Ree suddenly appear - a sign fate or God as Glass interprets it. But that does not justify the fact that he had put his own and the Captain's life at risk just to get revenge instead of 'putting it into God's hands' right from the start. Maybe this act of not killing Fitzgerald but letting him be killed might be seen as the character development I was so desperate to find, but it is still far from satisfactory. Assuming Glass defeats death and keeps going in order to seek revenge, this is a story of the weakness of man. There is no message in that, except that we are weak and affective.
In the end I was wondering if I might not simply be too young for this film, just having started university. Studying philosophy and film I would have expected to cope with it more easily, but found it very disturbing and unsatisfactory instead. It gives no answers. Perhaps it is not trying to, just telling a story. But then it would be telling a 2.5h tale of revenge and that, again, is not very full of meaning.