Leo is suffering for his art but an Oscar should cure it

It was Alfred, Lord Tennyson who coined the phrase ‘nature, red in tooth and claw’; it occurs in his 1849 requiem In Memoriam A.H.H. and is generally taken to refer to the majestic savagery of the natural world, where primal desire takes precedence over any sentimental consideration.

The phrase came to mind while watching Alejandro Inarritu’s film The Revenant which is very definitely film making, red in tooth and claw. This is a primal experience captured by a cast and crew in similarly primal circumstances and the results are spectacularly manly. This is red-blooded storytelling and red-blooded film making in which Leonardo DiCaprio and others suffer heroically for their art.

The story concerns Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), a frontiersman acting as a guide for a group of trappers in the northern Missouri wilderness of the United States in the early 19^th century. They are attacked by local tribes – a spectacular opening sequence – and forced to flee. While trying to blaze a new trail DiCaprio is attacked and savagely mauled by a grizzly bear.

It seems he will not survive so, rather than delay their escape two of his colleagues – Tom Hardy and Will Poulter – are bribed to stay with him until he dies, and then catch up with the others after giving him a decent burial. Hardy doesn’t want to wait for nature to take its course so he kills DiCaprio and they hightail it for safety.

If that’s all that happened, it wouldn’t be much of a movie. DiCaprio, as it turns out, is not dead. He may be horrifically wounded and hovering at death’s door but he is still alive. Now it is his turn, motivated by the twin primal instincts of survival and revenge, to struggle back to civilisation and take his vengeance.

There’s not a lot of nuance in The Revenant; it is a terrific tale, told exceptionally well and no more than that. The fact that Hugh Glass was a real person simply adds to the awe with which you are inclined to view this. With a little dramatic embellishment, this is a true story; Glass really did travel 600 miles to safety after being left for dead by his companions. The story has been told before in the 1971 film Man in the Wilderness with Richard Harris in the lead.

The abuse and physical damage visited on Glass during the journey is somewhat reflected in DiCaprio’s performance. He is a fine actor but this is very much a plea to the Academy; that of a soul in the wilderness crying out ‘What the hell do I have to do to get an Oscar?’ I suspect his efforts will not go unrewarded.

The real delights of this film are in the craft skills. Inarritu is a superb storyteller and with his tried and trusted cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki he has crafted a compelling and thrilling tale. Shooting entirely in natural light and with marvellous use of negative space Lubezki does a wonderful job of creating a strange and unexplored world where life-threatening hazards lurk at the edge of every frame.

Although it shares a lot with the aforementioned Man in the Wilderness and also Sydney Pollack’s excellent Jeremiah Johnson, which by chance I watched again just a week before seeing this film, The Revenant is still a fine piece of work which deserves all of the honours which are bound to come its way.