The Revenant

A film set in the north of America in the 1820s. A party of fur trappers is attacked. The survivors leave the pelts and escape by river. Hugh Glass is the guide. He is torn apart by a grizzly bear in the forest and is expected to die. The party cannot carry him. Two men are assigned to stay and bury him; one of them does not want to wait and kills Glass's son in front of him. Then they leave him in a hole and go. Glass does not die. From there the film is a crawl. A river, snow, the carcass of a horse, a group from a tribe, a French camp and a march that lasts weeks. There is almost no dialogue. Glass is wounded in the throat and cannot speak for most of the film. What the narrative is interested in is not revenge but endurance: the film is about the road to the final encounter rather than the encounter. It was shot entirely in natural light. Because of that only a few hours a day were workable, the schedule stretched and the cost grew. It was made in Canada and Argentina; when there was not enough snow the crew moved to the southern hemisphere. The bear sequence looks like a single shot and combines a computer-generated animal with real work on set. Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Academy Award for the part; the director and the cinematographer won as well. Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson and Will Poulter are in the cast. Alejandro González Iñárritu directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes films centred on landscape and physical endurance. Who it is not for: anyone looking for pace; the film is long, quiet and shows violence without decoration.