Monday, 9pm, Film4
Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant (2015) is less a historical narrative and more a visceral opera of endurance, revenge, and the interplay between man and nature. Anchored by Leonardo DiCaprio’s grunting, frostbitten performance as Hugh Glass, the film captures the brutal beauty of the American frontier. It’s a stunning if occasionally overbearing exploration of survival, but one should not look too closely for historical veracity. While the true Hugh Glass indeed survived a bear mauling and crawled hundreds of miles, the screenplay’s embellishments, including his mystical encounters with Indigenous spirits and unrelenting vendetta, elevate him to mythic proportions. As history? Perhaps not. As cinema? Breathtaking.
One cannot discuss The Revenant without lauding its soundscape. Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto’s haunting score, augmented by Bryce Dessner’s additional compositions, weaves a minimalist, almost primal tapestry. The music echoes the stark expanses of Emmanuel Lubezki’s natural-light cinematography, where silence and the howl of wind often speak louder than dialogue. The score moves like the relentless flow of the Missouri River—alternating between eerie stillness and sudden, jarring intensity, underscoring the existential weight of Glass’s journey. The use of dissonance and unconventional instrumentation feels elemental, a reminder of how sound can evoke both the terror and sublimity of untamed wilderness.
Of course, Iñárritu revels in his artistic liberties. Glass’s historical quest for revenge ended without bloodshed; he forgave those who abandoned him. The film, however, is a near-biblical parable of retribution. Even the bear—rendered in astonishingly brutal CGI—feels more allegorical predator than actual grizzly. Yet this doesn’t detract from the film’s operatic scope. If The Revenant stretches the truth, it does so with poetic audacity, crafting an experience as harrowing and ethereal as a snowstorm in the Rockies.
- Tom Hanson