The Revenant

In terms of pure spectacle and cinematic beauty, Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant approaches masterpiece status. From the opening single-take melée, which plays like a frontier cousin to Saving Private Ryan's Omaha Beach landing, to a brutal climax in a frozen river valley—it stuns. Virtually every frame looks worthy of hanging on a wall like a blood-soaked Ansel Adams.

The craftsmanship that propels The Revenant shouldn't surprise anybody who saw Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki's Oscar-winning Birdman. Here, it's like the pair is playing a game of cinematic oneupmanship, shooting The Revenant in all-natural lighting and packing it with dazzling tracking shots that create a gritty, visceral realism that's as exhausting as it is awe-inspiring.

For all its complicated technical feats, the film's (loosely) fact-based story couldn't be simpler. Fur trapper Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), the kind of near-feral outdoorsman that Ted Nugent writes songs about, finds his trapping party on the receiving end of a bear attack that leaves him barely clinging to life. With the elements closing in, the party's captain directs two group members—naive Bridger (Will Poulter) and greedy Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy)—to stay behind with Glass and his half-Pawnee son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) to see Glass through to his imminent death. While Bridger is away from camp, Fitzgerald expedites the process by killing Hawk and burying the still-breathing Glass. Naturally, Glass—a mass of broken bones and exposed flesh—comes to, digs himself out, buries his son and sets out to claw his way across hundreds of miles of frozen landscape in pursuit of vengeance.

Playing Klaus Kinski to Iñárritu's Werner Herzog for what was reportedly a shoot of Fitzcarraldo-level difficulty, DiCaprio brings his A-game to an abstract role. The Revenant is nothing if not ambitious: a high-concept art film that happens to have an A-list cast and a huge budget. With only a handful of lines in English, DiCaprio's Glass is defined by action. Only a few Terrence Malick-style dream sequences offer insight into what drives him. Instead, DiCaprio does all the heavy lifting in character development with his pained and determined eyes, giving a powerhouse physical performance that might not be his best, but it comes close. He's basically in full Death Wish mode, selling the character's motivations in relative silence.

But DiCaprio is matched—if not surpassed—by Hardy, who seems like a man born in the blood and muck of the wild. His Fitzgerald is a character of complex despicability, layering cowardice and selfishness atop a façade of unbreakable masculinity. Speaking in an accent so garbled it makes Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn sound like a master orator, his fireside chats with Bridger are among the film's best moments, with Hardy defending his malicious opportunism as if he were America itself during the age of Manifest Destiny.

The Revenant is, of course, not without flaws. Ever since his electric debut, Amores Perros, Iñárritu has overstuffed his narratives. Here, subplots involving French trappers and a kidnapped Arikara woman kill momentum, and the film is littered with distractingly fake CGI animals. The rare moments of peace—like Glass catching snowflakes on his battered tongue—are so heavy-handed that they border on goofy.

Such quibbles aren't enough to detract The Revenant from what it is, though: one of the best wilderness survival films of all time. It's a violent, unrelenting and staggeringly beautiful cinematic experience that leaves you feeling battered by an angry mother bear by the time the credits roll, but ready to take the ride again. Brace yourself.

Critic's Grade: A-

SEE IT: The Revenant is rated R. It opens Friday in most Portland-area theaters.

Willamette Week