Eventually, fearing for their own lives in the face of warlike Native Americans in the vicinity, the two men left Glass––again, clearly anticipating he would expire from his wounds. Second, after the mauling, Fitzgerald and another, unidentified man agreed to stay behind with Glass until he died and provide him a “Christian” burial. First of all, the attack occurred in the summer, not in the bitter cold. The filmmakers have embellished the circumstances surrounding Glass’s abandonment to demonstrate the rottenness of humanity and the malevolence of John Fitzgerald in particular. Certainly, no son was along with him in 1823 and available to be murdered by one of his fellow trappers. There is no evidence, for instance, that Glass had a Pawnee wife or a son by her. It is true that Glass was mauled by a bear, but many other details in the film are simply made up. Glass is also spiritually driven by his desire to avenge his son’s murder, as well as the encouraging, beyond-the-grave whispers of his Pawnee former wife, the victim of a soldier’s bullet.Īside from being excessively gruesome (and burdened with a touch of mysticism), Iñárritu’s film falsifies the historical record in important ways. He is sustained and strengthened by a diet of animal carcasses and, in one scene, he disembowels and sleeps inside a dead horse. Incredibly, the trapper regains consciousness and The Revenant continues as a saga of painful miseries, including Glass dragging his torn, mangled frame through inhospitable frozen lands and tumbling into freezing rapids as he contends with hostile Indians and thuggish French hunters (who capture and rape an Arikara girl). However, the money-hungry Fitzgerald kills Hawk and throws Glass into the hole he has dug for a grave. Henry leaves Hawk, Bridger and Fitzgerald (for payment) with Glass to tend to and bury him when the time comes. Although his body is nearly ripped to shreds (his handsome face is miraculously untouched!), the frontiersman clings to life. Iñárritu makes an unbearably long and brutal scene out of his mauling by a grizzly bear. Soon afterward, disaster strikes Glass individually. Those left alive include Glass, expedition leader Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), Glass’s half-Pawnee son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), another young hunter Jim Bridger (Will Poulter) and Texan John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), a mercenary bully and victim of an earlier partial scalping. Most of the trappers are killed in the skirmish. They feel justified in assailing those who have slaughtered their people and invaded their lands. The Native Americans are seeking to steal pelts to trade them for rifles and horses with French contractors. Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the scout for a party of hunters and fur traders that is attacked, as the movie opens, by warriors from the Arikara tribe. While Birdman, with qualifications, is something of an exception, The Revenant is not. Overall, The Revenant is a highly fictionalized and sensationalized chronicle of Glass’s ordeal and a harsh epoch in American history.Īs a rule, Iñárritu, known for Birdman or ( The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), Biutiful (2010), Babel (2006), 21 Grams (2003) and Amores p erros (2000), revels in extreme––often cruel––behavior and seems obsessed with what he sees as humanity’s anti-social character and its physical and moral decomposition. Set in 1823–24, the film, while never specifying its locale, is meant to take place in the area that is now Montana, North and South Dakota and Nebraska. Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Iñárritu’s The Revenant is loosely based on the real-life experiences of American fur trapper and frontiersman Hugh Glass (1780–1833) and adapted from Michael Punke’s 2002 historical adventure account, The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge. Smith, based on the novel by Michael Punke Youth, written and directed by Paolo Sorrentino The Revenant The Revenant, directed by Alejandro Iñárritu, screenplay by Iñárritu and Mark L.
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