The Revenant [DVD] [2016]

Alejandro Inárritu, the director of the film, has previously taken some hits from professional critics. He’s one-dimensional some say. He relies too much on filmic techniques to spin his narratives (dissolves, soft focus, slow-mo, steadicams for action). Duly noted, though I’m largely unimpressed by these critiques. Some critics complain for a living, so they will always find things to complain about. Never mind that they could never do what artists do, which is why they are critics, not artists. François Truffaut, rare and magnificent exception, was both. His love of film and film writing made him the auteur he was.Inárritu is a master of creating mood and atmosphere. He achieves this through music (minimalist, haunting) and natural sounds (thunder, rain, rushing water, waterfalls, creaking trees, crackling fires, birdsong, the wind) but mostly through his visuals. If one has the eye of an artist, use it. He does. His aesthetics are subtle and create the illusions he seeks.I watched the film in the comfort of my own home, unthreatened by rainstorms, rushing rivers, snowfall, nights spent out in the open, wild bears and treacherous human beings. You probably did too or will so the same. None of us views a film in the conditions where events in it take place. Yet the photography here is so powerful it creates the sensation we are in that wild world. I understand now why the film won several awards, including Academy Awards for best director and cinematography (Emmanuel Lubezki). Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar too. Did he deserve it? You can decide. I say he did. He’s half human, half savage beast in this. He fights a grizzly with a knife and kills it before it can kill him, though the bear more or less shreds him. This provides the turning point in the narrative. Gravely injured and left for dead by his fur-trapper comrades, he must find a way to heal and survive, driven by an overwhelming sense of injustice that fuels his desire for revenge.The environment, though extraordinarily beautiful, is harsh, grim, hostile, unforgiving. The human situation is equally bad. The incursions of white men (French, English, American) into the wilderness have created chaos and anxiety for the local tribes. The Pawnee, Sioux and Arikara are at each other’s throats, and all of them hate the Europeans for their savagery and duplicity. In one scene a French fur trapper named Toussaint accuses the Pawnee people of dishonesty. Their chief speaks to him as follows:“You stand there and talk to me about honour? You have stolen everything from us. Everything. The land. The animals. And now my daughter Powaqa.”She was kidnapped by French trappers and made a sex slave to satisfy their appetites. Part of the narrative is a search for her that mirrors the search of Hugh Glass for the men who have wronged him, abandoning him to die alone in the wilderness.Hugh (played by Leonardo) is a guide to the region. He has lived there for years and the trappers depend on his geographical knowledge and tracking skills. His wife was Pawnee. She was killed not long ago by a raiding party of white men, probably French. He has a son named Hawk who is maybe 16. Hawk means all the world to him now. The son can speak a little English but mainly he and his father speak in Pawnee. I say speak when I really mean whisper. It’s a soft language, quite gentle. Father and son are always quite physically near one another when speaking it. It feels intimate and poetic with many soft vowels, which may not be surprising considering where it evolved — among forests and rivers, valleys and mountains and pristine skies. There is always a temptation to romanticise the so-called noble savage, but it’s true that some tribes were more peaceful than others. The Pawnee seem to have been one of these. If they fought it wasn’t to gain territory but to protect their own. But now they are caught in a crossfire between other Indian groups and the Europeans.Hugh’s ability to speak Pawnee sets him apart from his kind. He may be white but, like the Pawnee, he belongs to the land and they see this about him. He has learned to think and act as they do. Also, he married into them and it’s clear his wife was no token squaw for him. He loved her deeply. We know this because we see her in his recurring dreams and memories. She is lovely and he grieves for her still, so Hawk is a precious link of his to her and to the lost world they shared.The film begins in the late summer or early autumn of 1823. But the seasons come and go quickly and most of the drama occurs in deep winter. Hugh is attacked and injured by the grizzly in the autumn. By the time he is abandoned winter is almost setting in. Three persons from the trapping party remain behind to nurse and protect him: his son Hawk, a young trapper named Jim Bridger (maybe 19) and John Fitzgerald, a Texan with a mean streak in him. Only two of these persons will depart from Hugh when the time comes, but I will say no more about this.Hunger for redemption, justice and revenge all form part of Hugh’s journey. The physical place he will return to, if he can, is called Fort Kiowa in South Dakota, over 300 km distant from the scene of his attack. But hardship, exhaustion and danger will be with him throughout: weakness and fatigue, harsh weather, little food, aggressive Arikara Indians (also called the Arikaree or Ree), and equally brutal French trappers.The story is true. The real Hugh Glass (1783-1833) survived. He was a revenant, a man returned from the dead. But the filmmaker has taken creative liberties, as filmmakers often do. One or two scenes seemed too improbable for me to accept, one in particular involving a horse and a cliff. But it doesn’t detract greatly from the integrity and beauty of the film.Stark beauty, I should say, a beauty that masks potential terrors. Wilderness for most of history was a frightful thing. Our holy books and even fairy tales warned us against it. It’s wild, untamed, dangerous. It has, so to speak, a mind of its own and won’t play by our rules. It lacks respect for civilisation and morality. This is its menace: it’s disregard for the significance of man and his achievements. So we see it as hostile, or traditionally have. We are wary and enter it armed to protect ourselves. If it is to be accommodated, this can only be done by the force of our weapons.The native view, the outlook of those who live in it (or did), is different. They’re at home among its harsh splendours. They’re aware of danger in it but do not see wilderness as threatening. They are used to wildness and have learned to cope with it, adapting to it. For thousands of years they have endured and prospered in it. It’s the newcomer, the white man, who is fretful. It’s he who trembles in its midst. He’s not to be trusted, as anxiety makes him trigger happy. He’s a trespasser with no business being here. Given enough power, time and freedom, he will ruin what he passes through. The natives know this but cannot stop him. He is a malevolent force.We see this menace directly in the minds and personalities of some white men who venture into the wilderness. Not all. Andrew Henry, an army captain who heads the group whom Hugh escorts, is a fair and decent man. Young Jim Bridger is also honest and trustworthy. But these are exceptions. By and large the better human beings Hugh encounters are native. They know compassion.If some of the characters are a bit sketchy, I think it’s O.K. Hugh Glass, Andrew Henry, John Fitzgerald and Jim Bridger are fully drawn, and these are the main ones that count. Other characters that matter in the film are non-human: mood and atmosphere, as previously stated; also, landscapes and vistas. The land is immense, its mountains and horizons curtailed only by an equally immense sky. Man is a small creature in this setting, dwarfed by the grandeur of creation. Nature is the dominant character here, its presence profound.John Muir once said the same about Yosemite. Only after he arrived there, he wrote, did he find his true place and scale in the world. Until then he had been a wanderer without proper bearings, noticing little or not enough in his surroundings. But in Yosemite, awed by the majesty of all that surrounded him, his view became spiritual and cosmic.On one view the film celebrates the indomitable spirit of man, his instinctive will to survive. On another, intentionally or not, it celebrates what Muir felt. We may be reaching a turning point in human history where we stand to lose a vast and precious world treasure if we don’t learn how to better protect and preserve our wilderness areas for future generations. The World Wildlife Fund says that 40% of the earth’s biodiversity has disappeared since 1970. You might want to pause for a few moments to let that statement fully sink in. It’s hard to take in, I know, but it needs to be understood and acted upon or the wanton, mindless destruction will continue.Joni Mitchell once sang that “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Hugh Glass wouldn’t have understood what she was singing about, but both John Muir and we do.

When I bought my 4k blu-ray player, one of the first films I said I would buy is The Revenant from 2015. That didn't actually happen as I have bought quite a few by the time I got here. But now that I have, I've been tremendously impressed at just how beautiful this film really is.The Revenant was originally released in December of 2015. The film was directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and was based on a screen play by director and Mark L. Smith. The film is a basic revenge story based on the frontiersman Hugh Glass. After being mauled by a bear, he is left for dead by Tom Hardy's John Fitzgerald. Glass drags his shredded body across the frozen wilderness to punish Fitzgerald for his evil doings. The movie is based on a novel by Michael Punke, which in turn is based on a 1915 poem titled, The Song of Hugh Glass.I rather enjoyed the movie's simple premise, mostly due to the fantastic casting. Leo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy are very convincing in their roles, Leo making me want to see Tom suffer. The movie isn't one to hold your hand. It has little in the way of dialogue and when the characters do speak, the actors use a heavy accent and a lot of old slang. The movie is two hours long and is pretty slow moving half way through. Hugh Glass is seriously injured and the pace goes with his bodies condition. There is a lot of screen time where Leo doesn't talk and spends a lot of it crawling, gasping for air and grunting. It's not heavy in dialogue and is definitely not your typical modern movie in the way they like to hold the viewers hand. It expects you to pay attention, to listen to what little the characters have to say and work the rest out through their emotions and mannerisms. It's a very basic movie and if you have a short attention span, I'll be surprised if you make it half way.Half of the movie's appeal (at least to me) is the wilderness that the characters traverse. There's lots of open fields of deep snow, lots of freezing lakes, deep thick woodlands and sharp rocky mountains. These lands are wild, the weather is harsh and mother nature does not care for the characters well being. It's a deadly frozen land of beauty and genuinely looks like it brought some pain to the people involved. The folks running the cameras etc did a beautiful job showing these horrible conditions and the awful experience of Glass as he tries to make his way back home.This movie is visually stunning. It looked incredible on the original bluray copy I owned. But with this new 4k I purchased, what a striking visual experience. The detail in the characters unwashed scruffy hair, the crumbling snow, the thick trees etc is so sharp that it looks like the television has turned into a portal to another world. It's by far the best looking disc I have owned. The sound is also very good. The 5.1 track doesn't focus too much on the music but more on the atmosphere and ambience. The back speakers focuses a lot on the crunch of snow fall, falling branches, foot steps etc. It's a wild experience and genuinely sounds like I was in the woods. It was very well done.If I were to recommend a 4k based solely on its visual and audio performance, it would be this one. It's an incredible technical achievement and well worth the money. However, if you're not into slow moving movies with little dialogue etc. This may be one for you to miss. With that said, I always recommend watching something at least once. You never know, it may very well be a slow paced film you do like. You'll never know until you try it. As for fans of the film, if you haven't upgraded your old copy yet. I strongly recommend you do so.

I first saw this film at the cinema, & predicted that Leonardo di Caprio would win an oscar, which he did!Based on a true story of sheer survival against all odds. Beautiful scenery with a fantastic cast! Highly recommended!

What's to dislike! I have my own DVD of The Revenant for many years to come.

I would recommend this movie to anyone, old enough to watch it 👍