The Revenant, 2016

To say that it was both emotionally exuberant and exhausting an experience to view this masterpiece of a motion-picture would be an understatement.

If there was a way to convey all of the determination and anguish of a fur tradesman from the nineteenth century in the brutally beautiful mountainous terrain of the American Rockies, it would be with the face of DiCaprio – who does it skillfully with the blazing emotions in his eyes and the grunts and groans he exudes as he pushes his body to superhuman feats. His is truly an amazingly physical performance. The Revenant takes a stark, simple story and stretches it out over two-and-a-half hours of mind-blowing artistry. It is slow and contemplative, staggeringly beautiful, and utterly compelling.  It is excruciating in the voluminous narrative that is unspoken for the better part of the movie – because none is needed.  And it is haunting in the intentionality of its many themes – the most obvious one being that of survival.

But even greater than that obvious theme of survival – that takes the shape of the ordeal endured by DiCaprio’s Glass – the more compelling ones to me were those of loyalty and love.  This was a love-story, plain and simple.  That between a man and a woman, and a father and his son.  One’s will to live is not so much a function of one’s desire to seek revenge, but due to the sweet memory of one’s loved one, and the determination to keep that memory alive for as long as possible.

This is, what is called muscular film-making, I suppose, and there is much muscle – and bone and blood and sinew.  Such imagery is not for the faint-hearted, but how does one then feel the pain of love and loss without any of that?  And while much has been made of the punishing physicality of the shoot in artic-like temperatures – with a digital grizzly bear that looks anything but digital, it is true that the film is gorgeously shot in a most relentlessly violent manner.  Alas, nature watches in gorgeous indifference as the human characters suffer.

If you ask me, this is a genre all to itself, but just to keep it simple, I would endorse this movie to be nominated for and to sweep Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Cinematography this year, next year and the year after that.