Movie Review—The Revenant

The Revenant

by Peter J. O'Connell

The Revenant. Released widely: Jan. 2016. Runtime: 156 mins. Rated: R for strong frontier combat and violence including gory images, a sexual assault, language and brief nudity.

A “revenant” is one who returns after a long absence, particularly one believed to have died during the absence or been subject to an unknown fate. In The Revenant, directed and co-written by Alejandro G. Inarritu, the Mexican filmmaker who received an Oscar last year for Birdman, the title character is Hugh Glass (Leonardo Di Caprio), a frontiersman of the 1820s. The film is based on some actual events in the life of Glass, a real person. 

Glass is with a fur-trapping party in the mountain West during winter and is accompanied by his son (Forrest Goodluck), whom he had with an Indian woman, who was later killed in a raid by the U.S. military. When Indians attack them, the trappers lose most of their furs and have to abandon the river boat that they have been using and return by land to their fort. Shortly after they begin this long trek, Glass is mauled by a huge bear—a stunning sequence that lasts several minutes. 

The severely injured Glass is left behind with his son, supposedly to be cared for by grizzled trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and young Jim Bridger (Will Poulter). Fitzgerald's care consists of killing the son and burying Glass alive. Then Fitzgerald and Bridger head off for the fort. 

Amazingly, Glass is able to make his way out of the grave and set off in great pain and with great difficulty to seek revenge on Fitzgerald. Numerous vicissitudes follow as Glass staggers through a frozen world, one both beautiful and dangerous, like paintings of the Hudson River/Rocky Mountain School—if those paintings depicted their sublime scenes in winter rather than the other seasons, and showed blood on the snow. Along the way, Glass clashes with a party of French trappers and is both menaced and helped by assorted Indians. And he eats some mighty interesting foods, including hand-caught live fish and buffalo organs. 

Leonardo DiCaprio does some fine work as Glass, and the same is true of Tom Hardy as Fitzgerald. However, despite his beard, bloody body, frozen snot hanging out of his nose, etc., DiCaprio (even at age 41), still seems a bit too baby-faced to be completely convincing as a really tough guy. (That was also the case with his performance as Howard Hughes in 2004's The Aviator.) 

Overall, The Revenant is a powerful piece of work by Inarritu and his cast, though the survival and revenge main theme and the secondary theme of the plight of dispossessed American Indians are only shakily integrated.

“Footnotes” to the film: (1) Interestingly, the term “revenant” apparently first began to appear in print in the 1820s, the time of Hugh Glass' ordeal. (2) Hard as the ordeal of the movie's Glass is, the historical Glass had it even harder. DiCaprio's Glass makes his way either on foot or on horseback. The real Glass apparently crawled much of the 200 miles to “civilization.” And DiCaprio's Glass has his wounds treated by a helpful Indian. The real Glass had maggots eat his dead flesh.