The Epic Western revisited

Rating: 8/10 (30 January 2016)

As most IMDb.com contributors, I have seen my share of Western movies. Most of them tend to glorify the conquest of the American West and contribute to the romantic image a lot of people still have of the Wild West. This movie is both a Western and an anti-Western: it tells us some very profound things about the way the United States was shaped in those early years (the story is set in the 1820's), but at the same time it does so in a very unromantic way. Maybe that's one reason why this movie has done so well with the jury that decides on the Oscar nominations: it's an epic Western, a genre held in high esteem in Hollywood history, but it is very much a Western revisited. The improbable chain of events frontiersman Hugh Glass is involved in, can sometimes get quite improbable: some scenes were so unlikely it drew laughs from the audience. Surely it is not a spoiler to mention that Mr. Di Caprio sleeps inside a horse (after having disembowled it) or has a close encounter with a grizzly bear. But also minor elements seem unlikely: e.g., how do you keep your gunpowder dry after having been submerged and swept away for miles on end by a glacial river ? Hugh Glass is, in many respects, very much a one dimensional character: the lone hero, lusting for revenge. But is doesn't do the movie justice just to leave it at that easy criticism. At the same time it is a quite profound movie. What moved me most about it was the way nature, and life itself, is portrayed. It is unforbidding, starkly beautiful and harsh and goes it's own course, indifferent to mankind. The overwhelming beauty of nature, the mountains, the rivers, is, besides Mr. Hardy and Mr. DiCaprio, a main character in this movie. There are many moving scenes where director Alejandro Inarritu draws our attention to just that: sometimes he just lets us watch the river, the moon or the trees. The way Hugh Glass slightly touches the dead horse as a sign of respect for being his 'host' is strangely compelling, although it's a detail in a movie that grips you right from the start with its daredevil adventure and gruesome action... Oscar experts have correctly noticed that this movie is also expertly well edited - the action scenes, especially the one where Mr. Di Caprio meets a grizzly bear are very, very skillful. A special mention also for the cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki: he makes the 1820's really come alive and adds reality to the scenes by using natural light and allowing his camera lens to be fogged or splattered with blood...