The Revenant: A Brutally Real Filmmaking That Has Nothing To Do With Reality

The film that’s made Leonardo DiCaprio a star should have taught him that it’s just impossible for a human to stay in the ice-cold water for longer than a couple of minutes: because of the temperature drop, one’s blood vessels contract so much, the heart is no longer able to push the blood through. And that’s just one thing… But nah, says Alejandro G. Iñárritu. I’m gonna have Leo body-raft down a freezing-cold mountain river, tumble down from a waterfall, and finally crawl ashore wearing a bearskin, which by that time should have weighed about a hundred pounds. And we know what happens to a man enveloped in 100 lbs. of stuff in the water. Those of us who have seen a single medieval knight movie know for a fact: man sinks like a stone.

Oh, well, says Iñárritu. That’s what YOU think – and shatters Leo’s right ankle to a point when it hangs by skin and tendon. At first, Leo does take it hard – barely moves. A day (!) later he crawls, using a crutch and a tiny stick for a splint. Another couple of days pass and he is moving like a drunken hockey player, though able to avoid all kinds of unwanted encounters, gathering and hunting… Finally, perhaps, after no more than two weeks of healing, he is running, mounting a horse on a fly, spurs it frantically, in short, displays the kind of vigour rarely associated even with a perfectly healthy individual, let alone someone who’s spent days under a snag in a forest. In winter. In Canada.

But the entire cinematic experience is great. This is the kind of achievement which could (and should, given the amount of pure garbage on offer) cap the whole cinematographic year. What is sad, however, is my persistent problem with ‘ballads of the strength of the human spirit’: I still can’t figure out how to feel about the blatant untruths filmmakers utilize to make their characters’ heroism believable.

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