The Revenant

The Revenant was beautiful and desperate and brutal and bleak. Conflict boiled down to its barest (bearest) elements. Man against man, man against nature, man against himself. Die or continue, breathe or don't.

I love extremes, so I really appreciated much of what this film had to offer. What stands out? Lovely wide angle shots that take in the whole scene and these wonderful long running shots that drift around, following the action, letting it wander off and then picking it up again. You have a constant sense of environment, of the inevitability of what will happen and of how small each of us sometimes is within our own dramas.

There are breaks from the brutality in the form of very moving and enchanting fantasy vignettes. These provide a little backstory for our main character, but also illustrate how he thinks and why he is strong and how he keeps choosing to breathe.

We've all heard the acting was amazing! I'll tell you what: I cannot look away from Tom Hardy when he is on the screen! I can't stop loving this actor and it just grows with time and exposure. I used to think that he is magical because he tells you everything with his face but when I watched The Revenant I realized he tells you just enough to keep you engaged but the reason you want to keep watching him is that he is also holding something back. You always feel like there is a little bit more and so you wait attentively. Brilliant.

And Lenoardo DiCaprio? Well he has about a hundred different ways to grimace, that's for sure! I have no complaints about the Olympic performance he put in and I think I would be pretty sad for him if he went through all of that and didn't win. But in some ways, his performance was more about watching him be tortured than it was about watching a trained actor turn in a nuanced performance.

My only complaint was length. The trials and near death experiences were so numerous, I started to get numb. I had my fill of death-defying ordeals but Innaritu kept saying, "and one more thing..."

This was odd: in my screening people cheered during the bear attack. I'm not sure what to make of that. Do you suppose they knew the bear that played that role? Did they just identify with that character? If so, I bet they were really unhappy to sit through the rest of the film and not see that character return. Perhaps the director's cut will include extra bear scenes. For their sake, I hope so.