Having just won a Golden Globe, DiCaprio is being tipped for Oscar glory, too, although that’s largely due to the reports of what he suffered during production. If he doesn’t get another best cinematography Oscar to add to his collection, then Academy voters deserve a bear attack of their own. The film’s virtuoso cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, has worked with Malick several times, as well as on such game-changing films as Children of Men, Gravity and Birdman, but he may well have excelled himself on The Revenant. With its gutsy scenes of backwoods endurance and its sublime mountain vistas, The Revenant is a cross between Werner Herzog’s gruelling travelogues (Aguirre Wrath of God, Rescue Dawn) and Terrence Malick’s spiritual reveries (The New World, The Tree of Life). Unfortunately for him, Glass stubbornly refuses to die, and he is soon stumbling after them. He stabs Hawk, leaves Glass for dead and sets off through the wintry wilderness with the conflicted Bridger. But Fitzgerald doesn’t fancy waiting around for another Arikara onslaught. The expedition leader (Domhnall Gleeson) assumes that he will die from his deep wounds in a matter of hours, so he orders his men to continue their trek, leaving three of them behind to give Glass a decent burial when the time comes: the disgruntled Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the callow Bridger (Will Poulter), and Glass’s own son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck). Glass survives his grisly grizzly encounter, but only just. But this latest seamless blend of live-action and CGI makes those earlier confrontations seem like playground scuffles. Iñárritu is a master at depicting violent melees, whether a spat between an actor and a critic in Birdman or a fierce burst of dog-fighting in his 2000 debut, Amores Perros. Alone in the misty woods, Glass points his rifle at two bear cubs, only to be clawed, bitten and generally mutilated by their furious and gigantic mother. But the Arikara aren’t the only predators in the area. Glass then declares that the survivors should be safe if they abandon their boat, and hike back to their distant encampment. The hunters make a desperate dash for their boat on the Missouri river, as arrows slice through the air around them, but most of them are killed in a heart-stopping, exquisitely choreographed sequence which should be on every future list of cinema’s greatest battle scenes. Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is guiding a hunting party through a remote forest when they are ambushed by Arikara warriors. The opening minutes pack in more visceral shocks than most films do in their entirety.
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