Boonmee’s review published on Letterboxd:
Hours after watching The Revenant, after dining with family, after comfortably riding home and after kicking back on the couch, taking in the annual farce at the Golden Globes, I am still left shivering, haunted by a frigid, hostile wilderness and the hot blood that paints it. I don't think I've felt more cold, more profoundly chilled by a character's ordeal than I did while witnessing this film.
We meet fur trapper, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), as he's hunting with his son. The scene is quiet. The trees are still. The water of a stream ripples like a silk garment over smooth pebbles. Rifle barrels enter the frame before the men do. They scan, they probe; stopping on an animal.
Elsewhere, at the camp, the others are preparing for the day. Sitting around the fire, grousing about the food, making playful innuendos. But then an arrow interrupts the scene, piercing the neck of a naked man staggering toward his comrades. Another arrow cuts through stunned silence. Then another. And dozens more after that, some lit by fire, the sound of sliced air closely followed by thundering hooves and native war cries. A weapon is discharged and Glass, not far off, ceases the field dressing of a fallen elk and bounds toward the noise, knowing its terrifying implications.
The camp is a mess of writhing limbs and hellish yowls. Lives ending viciously and legends being forged. Both sides are taking losses, but the white men are at a clear disadvantage. Glass arrives, imploring his comrades to forget the pelts and get to the boat. Also caught in the fray is a fellow frontiersman referred to as Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy). He shouts orders to gather the furs, slinging several packs over his shoulder as he dispatches numerous attackers. Here, a distinguishing line between characters is drawn.
A small group (Glass and Fitzgerald included) eventually reaches the boat, leaving behind blazing foliage, reddened mud and several dozen corpses. One final body will be dropped in the river before the team disembarks, the individual members plagued by hopelessness and frustration.
Not long after, Glass stumbles across a mother bear and her cubs, suffering horrendous mutilation, surviving by some combination of his own will and whatever higher power there may be. What follows is a betrayal, a vengeful journey and a survival story for the ages.
I loved The Revenant in a similar way to how I loved Macbeth. It is gorgeous and grotesque simultaneously, balancing soul-stirring human truths with wrenching brutalities. Caught between these two extremes, I found myself completely rapt. Throughout, my head throbbed as my senses were overwhelmed by imagery that alternated between the primal and the ethereal.
First: the primal. This film projects an incredibly elemental sense of place. For a story pitting man against nature, it's only appropriate that the environment plays a crucial role and Iñárritu's presentation is impeccable. Every scene is infused with the imposing energy of some natural entity, mixing it with the (physical or emotional) states of the characters to great effect. Be it a herd of bison materializing at daybreak or a huddled mass of withered flower buds sticking out of the snow; a punishing blizzard at dusk or lively embers rising out of the darkness to a half-lit moon; muddy puddles slowly turning crimson by the flesh bathing in it or an angry stream carrying a struggling body to its executioner, each element firmly planted me within this unforgiving landscape, furthering my identification with Glass's plight. I could feel the blisters forming on my fingers and the frostbite gnawing at my toes.
As for the ethereal, The Revenant expresses an ambiguous, yet unmistakably "earthy" spirituality that hovers just above the drama's grit. Fragments of haunted memories and dreamy visions flash by in brief interludes, but even the bracingly sober sequences are imbued with a degree of eeriness by Emmanuel Lubezki's seemingly omnipotent camera. God is invoked (at one point equated to a squirrel who was promptly eaten by the starving man who happened upon it) and a reciprocal, natural order quietly wriggles into the proceedings. "Revenge is in God's hands" is a repeated phrase and the words find meaning in surprising ways.
I won't pretend like The Revenant was shockingly deep or espoused some philosophical revelation that I had never considered, but as a straightforward narrative of basic elements (e.g. man, nature, God, revenge and redemption), it is almost perfectly pitched. There's so much detail and so much intelligence in its construction, that I struggle to grasp how one could not feel even the slightest bit of awe when drinking in both its intimacy and its breadth.
But perhaps I'm overstating my disbelief in a negative opinion. For most viewers, I think their experience of the film will hinge on their capacity to withstand not only brutal violence, but uncompromising misery. The Revenant is certainly an endurance test of sorts and it lets you know what you're getting into by the end of its opening scene. I don't blame anyone who walks out of this with a sour taste in their mouth and a yearning for a glimpse of sunlight. This film will beat the shit out of you, but if you manage to make it past the ugliness and find resonance in the picture's subtle rhythms, the beating will have been worth it (and no, that doesn't make you a masochist).
Bleakness largely reigns, but what pulled me through was the sensible distribution of numerous small narrative touchstones that kept me continuously engaged. Glass alone has several encounters, triumphs and failures of varying size, but what took me by surprise was how much depth there was to the pieces moving around him. We get scenes with Fitzgerald and the boy saddled with him, but there's also a party of French frontiersmen making their way through the countryside and a tribe of Arikara native peoples searching for their chief's presumedly kidnapped daughter. These side characters and subplots make a meaningful impact on the story; an impact that doesn't become fully clear until the end. The details enrich the scope of the time period portrayed and the larger conflicts at work. Amidst this tale of personal tragedy and reinvention, there is the image of a very young nation wrestling with the naïve condescension and resulting slaughter that would come to taint its future success.
But most compelling of all is the complete expression of a character's journey. The other day, I criticized Sicario for lacking the weight of an impactful character arc. What The Revenant had to offer was exactly the kind of thing I was after. The film demonstrates the distinction between a regular story that you seamlessly drop in and out of and an immersive trip that you feel in your bones; the kind of visceral roller coaster ride that lingers in your mind for days, maybe even weeks, afterward - not unlike the effect of a solitary three day hike or an epic cross-country odyssey.
To many the length will feel excessive and the pacing glacial, but almost every bit of the film's deliberate tempo felt appropriate to me, as it was all in service of a cumulative journey and a character's mental/spiritual growth within that journey. Hugh Glass experiences three instances of re-birth throughout the film, each preceded or followed by a profound loss that marginally informs his resolve, determination or connection to nature, leading him to overcome and sometimes embrace the things that try to kill him.
All this talk of "journey" and "character growth" cannot be said without an acknowledgement of the actors who made it real. Leonardo DiCaprio, in this role, has further solidified his status as one of Hollywood's greatest treasures. The man has truly entered the most interestingly experimental phase of his career thus far. In Django Unchained, he confronted evil head on, with believable malice and contempt. In The Wolf of Wall Street, he displayed his skillful comedic delivery and previously hidden knack for physical humor. But with The Revenant, DiCaprio puts his physicality to new use, conveying the anguish of a broken man. He aches, limps, wheezes and winces, and each muffled utterance comes off as genuine. Even in his quieter, more reflective scenes - those not driven primarily by pained physical impulse - he powerfully gets across the torment of a battered soul. I'm not sure I've ever seen him emit such vulnerability. It's a harrowing performance and one that is - dare I say - career defining.
The surrounding performances are similarly impressive and lived-in. Tom Hardy is better than I think a lot of people are giving him credit for. Although I'm admittedly somewhat pre-conditioned to enjoy his wild-eyed, mumbling antics, he is a very effective villain, threatening in his screen presence to the last. Also very good are Domnhall Gleeson (who continues to be an exciting up-and-coming talent and doesn't disappoint here) and Will Poulter, who's got a very bright future ahead if his turn here is any indication.
If you haven't figured it out already, The Revenant knocked my socks off. Meticulously built, but rawly performed and felt, the film is an acquired taste (and a bitter one), but one with ample rewards for those who connect with it on a primal level.
