THE REVENANT

Sometimes I wonder if it's just me; at other times I'm convinced that critical snobbery really is alive and well. For many critics a director can do anything but be successful. The latest case in point is Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu who may be raking in the Oscars but is now fashionable to slag off and for that very reason. Nothing like back to back gold statuettes to attract those critical brickbats.

Last year Inarritu won both the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for "Birdman", not to mention the screenplay prize. In a year that also saw "Boyhood" I felt this was a bit excessive but while "Birdman" may not have been the year's Best Picture it was infinitely better than many critics suggested; bold, innovative and one of the great movies about the theatre. Now we have "The Revenant", a two-and-a-half hour wilderness epic about survival that has just received 12 Oscar nominations and would appear very much the one to beat when it comes to handing out the awards. It's also become very fashionable, in some critical quarters, to pan it and to pan Inarritu, not just for having the audacity in making it in the first place, but suddenly for his entire body of work, as if success at the Oscars was beneath a real artist.

Okay, I don't think it's a masterpiece but it's also bold, innovative and the work of a visionary director who isn't afraid to take chances even if they don't always pay off. Basically it's the story of one man, Hugh Glass, (a terrific Leonardo Di Caprio), left for dead by his fellow trappers in the wilderness, (the title comes from the French for ghost or perhaps more appropriately someone returning from the dead), as he makes his way back to what passes for civilisation to extract his revenge.

It's a long and gruelling picture, never more so than for Di Caprio who is really put through the mill here and while there are several scenes of action and excitement there are equally long stretches when absolutely nothing happens. Perhaps, with a bit of judicious pruning, Inarritu could have made a tighter film, (there is only so much of Di Caprio wandering through the snowy wastes we can take), but I am also out on whether shrinking the film would have improved it. What we have is very much Inarritu's vision, warts and all, and in an age when commercial film-makers tend to play safe, it's great to see someone break the rules.


Visually it's extraordinary, (once again the stunning cinematography is in the safe hands of Emmanuel Lubezki), and as well as Di Caprio there is equally fine work from Domhnall Gleeson as the captain who tries to save him and Tom Hardy, (stealing every scene he's in), as the villainous Fitzgerald. Last year I felt "Birdman's" Oscar glory was undeserved; this year I will have no such reservations when "The Revenant" sweeps the board.