The Revenant

"I ain't afraid to die anymore. I'd done it already."

The Revenant (2015) is already notorious for its tortured production and polarized response. Alejandro G. Inarritu's follow-up to Birdman is a flawed frontier epic, ambitious but ultimately overreaching.
The Revenant is based on Michael Punke's novel, chronicling frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio). While trapping in the Dakotas, Glass is mauled by a bear; colleagues John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and Jim Bridger bury Glass alive and murder his half-Pawnee son (Forrest Goodluck) for good measure. Glass survives, embarking on a cross-country odyssey fight the elements and hostile Ree Indians. Much hardship and violence follow as Glass staggers towards civilization, seeking revenge.
At 156 minutes, The Revenant is never boring thanks to Inarritu's electrifying direction. Birdman's percussive energy finds explosive expression outdoors, inundating viewers with immersive long takes. He opens with an astonishing Indian battle, the camera swirling to follow arrows and mounted Indians, changing perspective with astonishing ease. That's matched by Glass's grizzly fight, one of the most agonizing action scenes in memory. This brutality extends to later scenes: a horse chase culminating in a cliff-fall, a climactic tomahawk-knife duel.
Unlike The Hateful Eight, The Revenant's savagery has a real edge. Bass bears bone-deep claw marks while water pours from a neck wound; reduced to animality, he relishes raw fish and buffalo entrails. Another gruesome scene has Bass sleeping inside a disemboweled horse. Inarritu shows human decency eroded in the wilderness, outposts of civilization (a wrecked church, rickety forts) swallowed by blizzards and destroyed by warfare. Channeling Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, Inarritu shows death as the frontier's only constant.
Engrossing though they are, Inarritu's visuals overreach. He and photographer Emmanuel Luzbeki provide endless indelible images: flaming arrows arcing through tree tops, torches flickering through the mist. Increasingly this turns to Terrence Malik-esque onanism, lingering on insects and dripping leaves, not to mention the ludicrous dream sequences. By the last reels, the endless skyward shots and froth-mouthed close-ups grow laughable. As does Ryuichi Sakomoto's score, so one-note ponderous you'd swear Hans Zimmer composed it.
The Revenant has a cleaner story than Man in the Wilderness, Richard Sarafian's take on Glass. Unfortunately, it hinges on a tedious revenge plot. The real Glass didn't have kids; adding a slain child provides cheap motivation. French trappers, somehow stranded in America 60 years after the French and Indian War, provide easy villains, selling guns to the Rees and sodomizing Indian captives. This ties to a cop-out ending, a revenge by-proxy stolen from The Man from Laramie. Glass outgrows the need for revenge, but them savage Rees sure don't!
Leonardo DiCaprio's all-crawling, all-wincing performance seems a logical extension of The Wolf of Wall Street's cringe comedy. DiCaprio channels uncontrollable pain into every strained movement and ragged expression with little doubling or trickery; he endures just about every ordeal except an actual mauling. It's certainly impressive, but hard to judge conventionally. I'm curious to see how Academy voters rate it.
Tom Hardy resurrects his inscrutable cracker from Lawless, playing a villain more selfish than evil. Other supporting players are one-note: Domnhall Gleason's upright captain, Will Poulter's callow Jim Bridger. Arthur RedCloud is appealing as a friendly, though short-lived Pawnee. Duane Howard's evil Ree Chief receives garish green lighting like a German Expressionist villain, though his motivation's more relatable.
Ultimately, The Revenant's such a mess it's easy to see why it evokes such different reactions. Staged on an impressive scale, it's an exhausting achievement. Shame that Inarritu can't make things more satisfying.