The Revenant brutal, beautiful work of art

CEBU, Philippines - Alejandro González Iñárritu’s frontier survival saga “The Revenant” seeks to join the ranks of Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now”: movies that take some of their primal madness from their raw, remote natural landscapes – in this case, the Canadian Rockies.

The making of those movies are mythic tales in their own right, and “The Revenant” arrives with its own tall tales of on-set tussles and actors’ derring-do.

After confining himself largely to the interior of a Broadway theatre in “Birdman,” winner of the Best Picture Oscar last year, Iñárritu – and his maverick cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki – opts for the open air of the West, circa 1823, in a loose adaptation of Michael Punke’s 2002 novel about ­frontiersman Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The result is some of the most impressive filmmaking of last year, or any year, as Iñárritu and Lubezki stretch their fluid long takes down river rapids and into the kind of clashes – a grizzly bear attack, a tribal ambush – never before portrayed on screen with this kind of awe-inspiring, naturally lit ­virtuosity.

DiCaprio is not the film’s true star – it is Iñárritu’s camera. He never lets us forget it, not only in the staggering single-takes, but by allowing characters to look into the lens, sometimes fogging it with their breath. “The Revenant” earns your admiration, only to lose it by continually insisting upon it.

Glass is guiding traders in their pursuit, through hostile territory, of beaver pelts. In our first view of the trappers, they’re camped in river-side pines when an eerie suspense settles over them. Arrows from all around sail into them before Ree tribesmen, searching for a stolen daughter, stream into the camp.

With mayhem and savagery all around, Iñárritu’s balletic camera sweeps through the slaughter and eventually drifts down the river with a small band of survivors. Among them are Glass; his Pawnee son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck); the company’s leader, Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson); a callow youngster (Will Poulter); and John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy).

The scene is the first taste of what is in store: the throbbing intensity of survival, played out across harsh, wintry terrain, in a series of flights and pursuits between men seeking a variety of vengeances.

There are occasional whispery flashbacks and surreal dream sequences that attempt to give the film more spiritual underpinnings that are little match for the movie’s relentlessly visceral reality.

In another extended single shot, Glass is mauled by a bear, leaving him so badly injured that death seems certain. After attempting to lug him through the mountains, Henry offers more money for volunteers to stay behind and give him a proper burial “when the time comes.”

Fitzgerald, interested in the extra cash, steps forward. Shifty and selfish, Fitzgerald is the obvious villain in–waiting – Hardy patiently waits for his opportunity to reveal a  deeper savagery and, let loose in the wild, he does not disappoint.

Neither does DiCaprio, in an often wordless, exceptionally committed performance of Glass’ great determination. As he was in Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street,” DiCaprio is most interested in extremes of performance.

But no one is more in rhapsody over the manliness of the mission than Iñárritu. His bleak and beautiful movie is overwrought, but also soaked through with the brutality of the frontier and the tragedy of its indigenous people who carry the deepest horrors of the land.  (FREEMAN)