Buried Alive by Leo's Beard: A Review of The Revenant

Seven and a half hours into The Revenant and I still have no idea what the title word of the film means; maybe it’s the sound the bear was making when he was snacking on Leo.  While the word’s origins remain a mystery we do know that a fresh horse carcass can make a cozy little shed if you happen to find yourself buck-naked at the bottom of cliff in the dead of winter sometime in the isolated wilderness of 1820’s North America.   By the way Leo rode the horse who would become a house over the cliff, but that’s another story and a soon to be extreme thrill ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

In his bid for an Oscar in the I-gained-the-most-weight-and-grew-the-most-impressive-beard category, Leo DiCaprio shows us time and time and time again that he really, really, really wants to take home the 13 and a ½ inch gold statue.  He’s like an Eagle Scout on Human Growth Hormone Therapy.  His atomic powered nose can pick up a three-week-old scent of tracks left behind by enemy fur traders. True, there were no showers in the tundra of Wyoming, so I guess the bad guys and the good were pretty smelly.  It’s a shame PETA wasn’t around back then.

Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu used exclusively natural light in the crafting of this epic, so mercifully you can’t even see half the movie, since those 879 hours were shot in the dead of night.  Movie Going Tip: Bring along one of those airline donut pillows and catch up on your sleep.

The film is an oft-told tale of revenge:  Leo loses his family, a bear tries to kill him, and the worst part--his friends are super impatient and can’t even wait for him to die so they bury him alive.  It’s almost like the The Hangover, but without the jokes and Mike Tyson. You can bet if the heavyweight champ had been there…well, that bear would’ve never made it out alive.  But I can see now, how Leo needed to overcome that particular conflict, for the rest of the 8 hours of the movie to make sense.

Leo finally meets a really nice indigenous person who has no designs on killing him.  In fact, he nurses Leo back to health, builds him a lovely warming hut and feeds him sushi-grade trout from a frozen lake. He heals Leo’s tortured psyche with sage advice about Karma and how the Earth and Nature take care of all your troubles.  He’s like Leo’s personal Obi Wan, so naturally he has to die, which I thought was a totally wasted opportunity.  I was certain The Revenant was about to turn into one of those classic buddy movies, but then I remembered they don’t give two best Actor prizes at the Academy Awards.