It’s the 1820s, and Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is like a grizzly man in the wild, setting out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.
Except, he seemed to already be on a path to nowhere, with a group of men that include John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) a belligerent jerk, long before the Indians, bears, bludgeoning, and bracing of the elements begin. Was DiCaprio trying to sell furs? And if so, where? Was he trying to stay alive for the sake of life against the Indians? Where is he headed? It’s never clear. Perhaps because DiCaprio barely says two words the entire film, instead wearing his emotions (very well) on his often frozen (literally) face. When he does speak, it’s only to his half-Native American son (whom he converses with in Pawnee) about the ground of pelt traders he’s taking to the ‘edge of the world.’
This is DiCaprio’s best performance to date…an internally tortured man tortured by the outside world as well. Yet he has a keen sense of love for all things nature, in a story so full of visuals, mountains, streams, and views to die for, that it makes him want to live. A tender scene (the only one) shows him catching snowflakes on his tongue with a young Indian.
This is God’s country, and Leo’s ready to tackle it. Intense, bloody and after a while boring, it’s a crazy juxtaposition of the need to survive vs. the joys to live. To make things all the more interesting, the movie is brought to us by last year’s Birdman Oscar-winning director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarruitu. Three tiaras