The Revenant

"I ain't afraid to die. I've done that already."

                                          

A man wakes and pushes himself out of his frozen, half-covered grave. He is injured and left for dead in the cold, harsh winter of the wild American frontier. He crawls across the ground in obvious agony to the snow-covered corpse of his loved one, the last of his family. He checks the corpse for breath or a heartbeat before laying on the chest and vowing to never leave. The camera, low to the ground, pushes in on this broken man and as his breathes become more ragged and heavy, the camera fogs. The scene transitions to an aerial shot close to a patch of thin clouds, high over the snow-capped mountains and plains of the rugged, brutal countryside as time and space pass. These clouds then become the smokey, slightly nervous breath of the murderer. A man, as tough as the land, who inhales his pipe while his companion nearby is unaware of the man's crimes. He is contemplative, eager to survive this moment and willing to do anything but to survive he must keep his companion alive without alerting him to his crime. The murderer and his companion are unaware that the injured man is hell-bent on revenge and hunting them across the wilderness.

Alejandro González Iñárritu won Best Picture last year with Birdman, Or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance, a comedic-drama about the decayed mind of a star actor that was most presented in one take thanks to some nifty digital editing, In 2015/2016 he and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki return for The Revenant, a breathtaking journey through the uncharted American frontier that has made headlines throughout the year due to its troubled production. Moving the entire production from Canada to Argentina to follow the weather, overblown action scenes and shooting in harsh wilderness and natural light. The Revenant stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter as prominent members of a band of hunters during America's early days who, after their camp is destroyed by Pawnee Native Americans and their hard-earned cargo of animal pelts lost, are forced to march across the frozen mountains and tundra's back to the safety of their frontier fort. Meanwhile the Native American tribe search and hunt for their chief's missing daughter.

The concept of breathing is the central thematic concern of the film, whether that be the physical embodiment of it, the emotional significance of it or even the psychological motivation such an innate part of life can provide within the perils of such a brutal environment. The score invokes the concept with percussion and low tones briefly swelling, booming and dissipating like heavy breaths, or higher more tense tones emulating hyperventilation in some action scenes. The transitions and editing within and between scenes uses the setting to its fullest, specifically bodies of water, to add the feeling of breathing through editing besides just communicating the advancement of time, and this extends to Iñarritu repeatedly using the emergence of characters from womb-like positions to echo the first breaths of life. Breathing is an integral part of the performance of the antagonistic leads DiCaprio and Hardy, often used instead of dialogue and feeding into the simplistic manner of this well-told story. Hardy again especially puts in another fine performance this year disappearing into the role of Fitzgerald, and this certainly is exemplified in his scenes with the other leads such as DiCaprio's silent skilled survivor, Poulter's youthful moralist and Gleeson's passionate, rational and tested noble captain who all often run foul of Hardy's brutal simplistic logic, lack of scruples and antagonism fueled by his desire to live in spite of those around him. The performances of the cast, the film's production design and costumes are flawless, brilliant and brutal, creating unique characters, and are never stock in appearance or performance but the true star of the film is the cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki who, if all is right with the world, should take home his third straight cinematography Oscar because of his work on this film.

Iñarritu and Gonzalez collaborated last year on the Oscar-winning Birdman and enough of the camera styles of that film are evolved within The Revenant to warrant the connection between the two films. While far from a single-take film there is plenty of single-take scenes and digital editing, "invisible cuts" achieved through matching moments and using digital editing software to manipulate and create the appearance of an unbroken moment, within large moments and the low-angle, diagonal close-ups on faces that made Birdman such a stand-out visually. But The Revenant is bolstered by a camera that almost breaks the fourth wall, that uses the breath-taking scenery and natural light to un-matched effect, and pushes digital film-making forward with its enviable clarity. Simply put, this is easily the best looking film in a good long while. Some of the landscape, establishing and aerial shots could be directly compared to the westerns of Sergio Leone and his unparalleled eye for capturing the location, while others appear as though directly taken by a seasoned wildlife photographer. Certain moments of action and tension are tastefully shot in one take, but the night shots prove especially beautiful with incredible scenes captured supposedly without artificial light sources. Lubezki committed to using the ALEXA 65 camera on the shoot and the results are instantly and emphatically apparent.

On the downside The Revenant does feel its 156-minute run-time with more than enough scenes of birth-like emergence and hairy men breathing heavily while hungrily devouring meat, Hardy's voice again borders on impenetrable at moments, a multi-lingual exchange has its immersion destroyed by the necessity for the subtitles to tell the audience that they're in French, and the final shot is a bit of a cop-out. But that hardly matters, The Revenant is worth the hype on the strength of the cinematography alone, and the reality that behind that is an intense, affecting, tragic story by a director in his prime, a brilliant cast and skilled crew (with a perfect score to boot) makes The Revenant a must-see film.