The Revenant is a masterpiece, American realism and naturalism in all its glory. Alejandro G. Inarritu delivers 19th-century trapper existence as manifest destiny and the will to live, and, along with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the most beautiful portrait of unspoiled wilderness and empowering depiction of American Indians to date. I would suggest to Anthony Lane (New Yorker) that Hugh Glass’s (DiCaprio) “moral monotone” is part of the film’s realism, and that Lane is looking for 21st-century laptop “personal growth” in 19th-century frontier stoicism. Of course, Glass permits the river to decide Fitzgerald’s (Hardy) fate, which could mark some change on Glass’s part. Manohla Dargis (New York Times) and David Edelstein (New York Magazine) mistakenly see the dream or hallucination sequences as Inarritu “blowing it” rather than what might come from a trapper’s suffering and survival. At no point does this film’s sublime realism lose itself to spiritualism or mysticism. It is more likely that these few mixed reviews succumb to the intentional fallacy.
STEVEN WEXLER 