The Revenant

Two acts of bloody ret­ri­bu­tion book­end The Revenant: to the west, Pawnee Indi­ans lay siege to a camp of Amer­i­can fur trap­pers, each true arrow car­ried by a chill­ing trib­al bat­tle cry; to the east, two men lay prone on the claret-stained snow fol­low­ing a bru­tal tus­sle, their heavy groans and grit­ted teeth the only dis­cernible signs of life.

Ale­jan­dro González Iñárritu’s pun­ish­ing fron­tier west­ern, based in part on Michael Punke’s 2002 account of the life of Hugh Glass (played with griz­zled gus­to by Leonar­do DiCaprio), trans­ports us to a time and place where every­one and every­thing is in a con­stant state of redemp­tion. Cru­cial­ly, though, the sins com­mit­ted by Glass and his cohorts – name­ly Tom Hardy’s red­neck mer­ce­nary, John Fitzger­ald, Domh­nall Gleeson’s eas­i­ly cowed expe­di­tion leader, Andrew Hen­ry, and Will Poulter’s gut­less green­horn, Jim Bridger – are not sins against a high­er pow­er but against humanity.

Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty is explored to a super­fi­cial degree here, but enough to estab­lish a fun­da­men­tal dis­con­nect between those who respect nature (and by exten­sion human­i­ty) and those seek­ing only to exploit it. One man appears to bridge this gap: Glass. Via a series of Mal­ick­ian flash­backs we learn that some years ago our intre­pid guide had a son by an unnamed Pawnee woman. While she is con­spic­u­ous through her absence, a now teenage Hawk (For­rest Good­luck) bears severe facial scars which paint a trag­ic pic­ture of the life he and his father have left behind.

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After a fate­ful encounter with a moth­er bear – a thrilling­ly chore­o­graphed scene that rivals the cuti­cle-strip­ping ten­sion of the game of Russ­ian Roulette in The Deer Hunter – Glass sud­den­ly finds him­self unable to pro­tect his own cub. What hap­pens next sets him on a dan­ger­ous new course where sal­va­tion is even­tu­al­ly earned not by a show of faith but a small ges­ture of human kindness.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, abso­lu­tion is not forth­com­ing in the back­woods of the civilised world. There is no sanc­tu­ary in prayer or proverb, no penance and no pathos. Only chaos and fury. As such, despite the con­no­ta­tions of the film’s title, at no point does Glass’ odyssey become tan­ta­mount to a reli­gious expe­ri­ence. Rather, his myth is spun in the grand Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of Jesse James, Jim Bowie and oth­er time­less folk heroes – the major dif­fer­ence being that Glass achieved only mod­est celebri­ty in his own lifetime.

What makes this par­tic­u­lar leg­end so enthralling is the vis­cer­al sim­plic­i­ty of the sto­ry­telling (with the help of co-writer Mark L Smith, this is Iñárritu’s tight­est screen­play to date). Glass is an enig­ma, yet the rea­son so lit­tle of his back­sto­ry is divulged is not because he has some­thing to hide, but because his arc is one of regres­sion instead of trans­for­ma­tion. (DiCaprio’s aston­ish­ing­ly com­mit­ted per­for­mance is essen­tial­ly an extend­ed reprise of the ​‘Lem­mon ludes’ scene in The Wolf of Wall Street.) For all the dis­tance he cov­ers, for every­thing he is forced to endure, it’s telling that Glass’ jour­ney ends the same way it began: with both a bang and a whimper.

If The Revenant is Iñárritu’s ​‘Heart of Dark­ness’, then Glass is Charles Mar­low and Kurtz rolled into one – fear and obses­sion by turns the watch­words of his lit­er­al voy­age upriv­er and his steady descent into mad­ness. In this hos­tile envi­ron­ment, where sub­ze­ro con­di­tions pose as great a threat as any man or beast, Glass faces a suc­ces­sion of worst-case sce­nar­ios that would make Bear Grylls baulk. But just as the life-threat­en­ing phys­i­cal injuries sus­tained dur­ing that griz­zly attack sig­nif­i­cant­ly impede Glass, the psy­cho­log­i­cal wounds inflict­ed by anoth­er adver­sary strength­en his will to survive.

When he’s not evad­ing Pawnee track­ers or bat­tling the ele­ments, Glass does his best to con­serve ener­gy and col­lect his thoughts. Yet while prim­i­tive acts like for­ag­ing for food and build­ing fires are car­ried out with mechan­i­cal pre­ci­sion and a sem­blance of men­tal clar­i­ty, his inabil­i­ty to repress an even crud­er impulse is symp­to­matic of an irrepara­bly dam­aged psy­che. The sight of Glass draped in his putrid tro­phy pelt inces­sant­ly mut­ter­ing the name of his tor­men­tor – or else scratch­ing it into the frozen earth – is the film’s most haunt­ing image.

How much we invest in Glass’ sto­ry is ulti­mate­ly a ques­tion of empa­thy. Because while the grief asso­ci­at­ed with the loss of a loved one is some­thing every­one can relate to on some lev­el, Glass’ irre­press­ible urge to exact ter­ri­ble vengeance on an equal­ly flawed (but not nec­es­sar­i­ly inher­ent­ly evil) indi­vid­ual is by no means a uni­ver­sal human trait. This white-knuck­le old world epic is first and fore­most a tes­ta­ment to tech­ni­cal artistry – take a bow DoP Emmanuel Lubez­ki, pro­duc­tion design­er Jack Fisk, edi­tor Stephen Mir­rione, com­pos­er Ryûichi Sakamo­to – that con­scious­ly avoids engag­ing in the moral­i­ty of revenge and is a bet­ter film for it. At 156 min­utes, The Revenant is also an unavoid­ably gru­elling spec­ta­cle that very near­ly buck­les under the weight of its cin­e­mat­ic ambi­tion. (The fact it came in over bud­get and over sched­ule is lit­tle more than a curi­ous footnote.)

That said, although the film’s attempts to decon­struct the human con­di­tion often feel as cold and remote as its frost­bit­ten Great Plains set­ting, it does suc­ceed in reveal­ing some basic truths about the heal­ing process and how the deep­est cuts don’t bleed. The Revenant may not land a deci­sive emo­tion­al blow, but the all-con­sum­ing nature of its chief protagonist’s anguish makes this Iñárritu’s most sin­gu­lar­ly affect­ing work.