Movie Review: The Revenant

Beware the bear. Actually, scratch that. Beware the picture with no sense of humour.

It’s not a rule without exceptions (unlike that bear one, because all bears are scary), but that idiom should at least guide you safely through the treacherous ‘Oscar months’; that period between December and February when the most self-serious Academy Award contenders are unfurled.

These Very Important Movies bat their expectant eyelashes at us and wait to be heaped with praise, no matter how middling and boilerplate they might be. Unfortunately, for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s hard-working revenge tale The Revenant, I can only offer this: it’s a’ight.

A gruelling 156-minute marathon, The Revenant is all movie all of the time, and thanks to the craftsmanship of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and the impeccable production design and costuming, it’s an undeniably impressive one.

What it isn’t is emotionally involving. A drama about despair doesn’t need to make us laugh; it just need to take place in a universe where feelings other than extreme pain can conceivably exist. There’s no reason to feel loss or agony if you live in a world where there’s nothing valuable to lose. Our hero, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, suffers greatly for us here, and the entertainment value of that alone will vary from viewer to viewer.

DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a real-life human being whose biography reads like a Ron Swanson fever dream.

In the 1820s, Glass – an explorer, fur-trapper and beard-cultivator – was viciously mauled by a bear while leading an expedition across some of America’s rockiest terrain. His body in tatters, Glass somehow prevailed, only to be abandoned by the men charged with nursing him.

A typically indecipherable Tom Hardy plays Fitzgerald, the half-scalped sociopath who decides to leave Glass for dead. To inappropriately paraphrase Pretty Woman, “Big mistake. Big. Huge.”

With great ingenuity and the kind of physical and mental resilience this coddled writer couldn’t fathom replicating, Glass got back on his feet and travelled approximately 320km to seek his vengeance. The obstacles pile up; his skin loosens with each accumulating punishment. Before long he’s resembling a long-lost character from Death Becomes Her.

Glass’ already dramatic journey was dramatised somewhat in Michael Punke’s 2002 novel The Revenant and has been dramatised a whole lot more by Iñárritu and screenwriter Mark L. Smith for this cinematic retelling.

The biggest invention is a teenage son for Hugh Glass. The product of a relationship with a Native American woman, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) is viewed suspiciously by the rest of the party; especially after the thrilling opening scene, in which a Pawnee tribe descend on their camp in bloody fashion, with only Hugh, Hawk, Fitzgerald and a handful of others escaping with their lives.

To The Revenant’s credit, the Native Americans aren’t depicted as a faceless, motiveless enemy. They’re seeking a tribal leader’s daughter, kidnapped by Europeans. Throughout the feature, we cut back to their quest, as well as, intermittently, to the French fur-trappers holding the young woman hostage. The paths of all our characters intersect in the lead-up to the finale, which I guess makes this the Colonial era Crash?

Iñárritu – before winning acclaim and Oscars for backstage comedy Birdman – used to exclusively traffic in sprawling ensemble flicks in which character archetypes found themselves bound together through circumstance, accident and perhaps otherworldly intervention. They were not very good. The Revenant, a throwback to those, is only slightly better.

It’s an improvement only thanks to the action sequences, composed with precision by Iñárritu and shot in stunning natural light (often in one lengthy unbroken take) by Lubezki. The bear attack in particular brings to gory life what Grizzly Man rightfully left to our imagination.

They're very compelling and exhilarating, if not innovative. Lubezki, after all, did the same in a similar and much more resonant survival movie: Gravity.

If you absolutely have to watch a film about an incredibly inventive man surviving in the absolute worst conditions imaginable, can I recommend The Grey instead?

3/5

In cinemas January 7, 2016. Rated MA15+ for strong bloody violence, themes and sexual violence.