Blood and brutality on the frozen frontier
COLD COMFORT: The Revenant, based on the saga of mountain man Hugh Glass, is a fierce tale of violence and revenge
The Revenant, a violent, visceral and yet transformational story of frontier-era survival and revenge, is “inspired” by the true story of historic American mountain man Hugh Glass.
That means that this version of the story, with Leonardo DiCaprio emerging as a slam-dunk to earn a best actor Oscar nomination for his guts-out performance as Glass, is actually as much fiction as fact.
But no one should ever see a feature film thinking that it will be an absolutely authentic representation of anything from history. If it is a strong “spiritual” representation — with a realistic setting, proper period dialogue, accurate costuming and naturalistic performances — then that is the best we can and should ask for. In that case, The Revenant is a stunning piece of cinema because it offers all those qualities.
The only reason that I am not ranking it even higher is that the brutal, bloody violence — however real that might be for a depiction of lawless frontier life in the U.S. Rocky Mountains of the 1820s — will drive some viewers out of the theatre. Yes, it is that excessive, in particular in its disturbing and not wholly satisfying climax.
That said, there is so much to like and admire and study closely, including DiCaprio’s mature, committed, ruthless and yet empathetic performance. In addition, the technical achievements are remarkable. This includes Emmanuel Lubezki’s raw cinematography, shooting exclusively with natural light, mostly on locations in Western Canada during short winter days. Other scenes were filmed in the U.S. and — for the climax after the snow had melted in British Columbia — in southern Argentina.
The Revenant is the latest American film from Mexican-born filmmaker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, who personally won three Oscars for his work on Birdman and saw his masterwork win the top Academy Award as best picture of 2015.
I doubt if The Revenant will repeat the shocking and wonderful triumph of Birdman. But it certainly will be nominated as best picture and many other cast and crew will be honoured with noms, too, DiCaprio not least among them.
The saga of Hugh Glass has been explored repeatedly in the past. This film is based on the historic fiction, The Revenant, written by Michael Punke and published in 2002. Inarritu and Mark L. Smith are credited with co-authoring the screenplay.
In this version, Glass does get attacked and nearly killed by a grizzly bear during a fur trapping expedition. That part is true. So are many details of the harrowing account of his survival and desire for revenge against the men who left him for dead. Much of the rest of the film, including his dead First Nations wife, his mixed-blood son and that youth’s fate, and the surreal flashback scenes that Inarritu uses to heighten The Revenant into a magic realism reverie, are pure fiction and creative cinema.
Glass represents a kind of progressive frontiersman. His primary opponent, fellow trapper Thomas Fitzpatrick, represents the old order. He is racist, selfish, uneducated, brutish and a killer, at least as depicted here. Tom Hardy, in yet another of his stirring transformations, plays him unsparingly. Will Poulter’s youthful work as future frontier legend Jim Bridger is our way inside the drama.
One of the fascinating parts of The Revenant is the depiction of First Nations people. Unlike their appearances in the Hollywood movies of old, these varied peoples are shown neither as murderous vermin nor as noble savages. Instead, they are accorded the same complexities, with the same range of human emotions and qualities, as other peoples in the story.
The difference is, as significant scenes demonstrate, the French and Euro-American trappers are the invaders and the First Nations people are defending their territories and natural resources. Inarritu shows what one chapter in that struggle might have been like, with iconic Hugh Glass caught in the midst of the violent madness as he crawls out of his grave.