Movie review: Brutal beauty and strength on display in 'The Revenant'
January 8, 2016 12:00 AM
If Leonardo DiCaprio doesn't win the best actor Oscar for "The Revenant," he may never take home the coveted Hollywood hardware.
No one has been nominated yet, but after seeing this movie, you may ask, "What more does the man have to do?"
In a year of outstanding performances by Matt Damon, Michael Fassbender, Eddie Redmayne, Johnny Depp and Will Smith, Mr. DiCaprio doesn't just dig deeply but he also buries the golden-haired, fast-talking charmer and seductive playboy from such movies as "The Great Gatsby" and "The Wolf of Wall Street."
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson.
Rating: R for strong frontier combat and violence including gory images, a sexual assault, language and brief nudity.
Yes, the bear attack scene is worth the price of admission, but the bearded, long-haired and dirt-streaked Mr. DiCaprio must play many of his scenes without dialogue, turning his body and facial expressions into his primary acting tools.
In "The Revenant," Mr. DiCaprio plays frontiersman and fur trapper Hugh Glass, a character based on a real Philadelphia-born explorer of the same name who was mauled by a grizzly and abandoned by the men assigned to stay with him. They assumed he would die. He didn't, and his reappearance became the stuff of campfire legend. The title, after all, means one who returns from the dead.
Michael Punke, a U.S. trade representative, read a few sentences about Glass in a history book, delved into research and spun that into 2002's "The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge."
Director Alejandro G. Inarritu, who won three Oscars for directing, producing and co-writing best picture "Birdman," and screenwriter Mark L. Smith then used the book as a launching pad for this historical epic, which embroiders facts with frontier fiction.
The story opens in the American West of 1823, a time when fur companies left employees in the field year-round and such prizes as beaver pelts were worth $5 each. The makers and buyers of European hats drove the demand for the fur, but the West could be a bloody battlefield for Native Americans and interloping trappers.
As the movie opens, Glass has lost his Pawnee wife and is traveling with his teenage son, Hawk (newcomer Forrest Goodluck), when their party comes under attack. Dozens die and tension is simmering as the narrow-minded John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) asks Glass whether he shot another white man to save his son.
"They just see the color of your face, understand? You have to listen to me, son," Glass tells Hawk.
Bigotry is nothing compared with what lies ahead: A bear charges at Glass, picking him up by his coat, shaking him, stomping on his back, stepping on his head and dripping spittle and fury. That is round one, and when the bear — traveling with cubs — returns, it bites, bloodies and mauls him.
When he is found by the others, Mr. Hardy's character suggests, "The proper thing to do is finish him off quick." He changes his mind when a reward is offered to stay with Glass but instead delivers betrayal, anguish and heartbreak.
Dragging himself along the ground and with a pelt on his back, Glass looks like the wounded animal that he is. Against shooting conditions so harsh they can barely be called unforgiving (temperatures as low as minus 27 degrees, blizzards), a struggle for survival plays out as Glass vows revenge and he battles Mother Nature and his own nature.
Two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki ("Birdman," "Gravity") shot the movie largely in Canada and Argentina in natural sun and firelight. "The Revenant" is as beautiful as it is brutal, whether the scene is the light-streaked sky at dawn, a snowy, foggy landscape or men carrying burning torches on horseback at night. It all feels eerily remote and untamed.
Some of the story has a thin veil of modern sensibility, as with the the violent struggle between the white men and the Native Americans — "You all have stolen everything from us," from land and animals to a kidnapped young woman — that serves as the backdrop. But a recurring theme is something Glass' late wife always said: The wind cannot defeat a tree with strong roots.
These roots, starting with Mr. DiCaprio and including a supporting cast that also counts Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Duane Howard and Arthur Redcloud, are strong indeed. And it makes those scenes of Michael Keaton in his tighty-whities in Times Square for "Birdman" look like the lap of luxury.
Movie editor Barbara Vancheri: bvancheri@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1632. Read her blog: www.post-gazette.com/madaboutmovies.
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