The Revenant (2016)

The Revenant was, by far, one of the most talked about and anticipated films of 2015, with the director of last year’s ‘Birdman’ and 2010’s ‘Biutiful’ in the director’s chair and an impressive cast of multiple Academy Award nominated Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Domhnall Gleeson. The Revenant is set in the early 1800’s and tells the story of Hugh Glass, an honest worker for a skins trading company that is mauled to near death by a bear and left for dead by his comrades, what follows is a brutal revenge story that will make even the toughest viewers cringing and looking away.

The first thing I would like to applaud, and one of the first things you’ll probably notice, is the absolutely beautiful cinematography, if you can, see this film in IMAX because it does look amazing. The landscape and atmosphere is captured perfectly, many times I felt the cold coming from the screen. The dark, moody colours with the gorgeous scenery came together to make some breath-taking shots. It would be my choice for the best cinematography Academy Award (since Macbeth wasn’t nominated). You can also see that he’s still got a little bit of ‘Birdman’ in his system, the film is filled with long takes that are incredibly complex and dialogue heavy making you wonder how difficult it must’ve been to film. However difficult it was, it was worth it. The action scenes especially looked brilliant, long sweeping shots of chaos, arrows and bullets flying and bodies everywhere, brutal, harsh and intense.

One of the main reasons so many people were hyped for this film was for Leonardo DiCaprio, every year it’s the same “Will he win an Oscar?”, so how was his performance? Personally I would choose Michael Fassbender for this year’s award, but Leo still gave a great performance. With what little dialogue he was given he just oozed pure emotion, you felt his despair and desperation to survive, even though he was mostly crawling about and rasping for the film. He took what little he had and made the most of it and for that I have to congratulate him, if it weren’t for Fassbender’s performance in Steve Jobs, I would say that Leo should win the Oscar. Of course he wasn’t the only exceptional actor in the film, everyone did very well, Tom Hardy in particular was a joy to watch, he’s a brilliant antagonist who you love to hate. He shows so little remorse for what he does, to the point where he looks like he is enjoying it, that it makes your blood boil and your fists clench whenever you see him and his shit-eating grin appear on the screen. Domhnall Gleeson was also excellent, it’s a shame he didn’t have that much screen time but he still manages to leave a lasting impression.

I would also like to talk about the costume and set design, a commonly overlooked part of a film and yet is a very important part, in this film especially. The costumes were brilliant and sold the era and setting, they looked very difficult to film and act with, which makes me respect the filmmakers even more for the extra effort. The sets were also well done, while most of the film is set in the wilderness and relies on location more so than set design, the parts that where indoors looked fantastic. Old, dusty, rustic and cold, all came across in how the sets were built and dressed. Another very impressive feature was the makeup, the injuries were disgusting and grotesque and that’s a good thing, as someone who is very desensitised to gore I still found myself cringing now and then at the realism of the wounds, feeling shivers run down your spine as you imagine what pain he is going through.

On a final note, the score. When I got home from the cinema I immediately started reading the book with the film’s score playing on my computer. Beautiful, chilling and haunting that was more ambience then it was actual music. It accompanied the film very well and is a joy to listen to by itself. I would highly recommend picking it up and blast it through the house.

Now it was all good until the end, I won’t spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it, but the last couple of shots were a complete cop-out. I can’t really describe it without giving it away but it was a major disappointment.

In conclusion I found myself loving The Revenant more than I thought I would, and I had pretty high expectations. The performances were brilliant, the cinematography was some of the best of this year, the music was haunting and the gore was brutal, almost every aspect was perfect with my only gripes being some slight editing errors, a few stupid character decisions near the end and the ending itself felling very lazy and disappointing. I would highly recommend this film to any fan of film.

On a side note I have heard people say the film drags and is too long, I personally felt it flew past, feeling a lot shorter than it actually was, I would’ve preferred an extra 10-15 minutes for a better, more thought out ending.

8.5/10