The Revenant
classified 15Please note: This was screened in Jan 2016
Inspired by true events and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, director Alejandro Gonzàlez Iñàrittu’s (Birdman) astonishingly gripping, big canvas tale of survival, revenge and primal violence set in the freezing wilds of the US Midwest tells the story of a Wyoming frontiersman who survived being mauled by a bear before embarking on an incredible odyssey to track down the men who abandoned him to die.
1823, Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) has joined a group of civilian privateers engaged in a US military expedition along the Missouri river to establish a lucrative base for fur-trapping. When Glass – an experienced tracker - and the others are set upon by tribesman warriors he guides the terrified survivors’ retreat across country. When he is brutally attacked by a bear, two men; young Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) and John Fitzgerald (Hardy) are detailed and promised extra pay to look after him. But when they leave Glass to die in agony and figure on returning to base with a fine tale about giving him a Christian burial, they reckon so without Glass’s fanatical will to survive.
Conjuring images of staggering, crystalline beauty that would make Terrence Malick proud alongside some of the most gasp-inducing landscapes and set pieces you're likely to see this year, this thrilling and gutteral piece of cinema feels somewhere between Herzog’s Aguirre, Wrath of God (with its visions of imperial greed and full flooding rivers) and Grizzly Man (in its particularly visceral way in which to meet your end). A sensory and aesthetic marvel, this brutal hymn to the beauty and terror of the natural world also features a performance of astonishing commitment from Dicaprio - who delivers as agonisingly a detailed portrait of human suffering as you could ever want to see. Wrap up warm for this ride.