The Revenant (15, 156 mins), Alejandro González Iñárritu’s epic story of frozen wastes in the 1820s, is a proudly relentless film, which takes death and discomfort as its starting place, and steadily ratchets up the pain. Fortunately, at least nine-tenths of its protagonist, the frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), appears to be composed of grit.
Glass is leading a group of men on a trapping expedition when they come under Cree Indian attack. The scene unfurls like a prolonged, bloody ballet, with Glass howling elementally in its midst, searching for his beloved half-Pawnee son who travels with him. The surviving party limps away, with Glass at its helm, until he is almost destroyed by a female grizzly bear protecting her cubs. The bear assault is both intimate and shocking, as Glass is sniffed, shaken, drooled upon and almost shredded. Barely alive, he is betrayed by a fellow hunter (Tom Hardy) and left to struggle alone, fuelled only by a thirst for vengeance.
This a harrowing film – indeed, as soon as one burst of harrowing is done, events conspire to harrow us again. In a brutal landscape, the chief point of existence for beasts and man alike is to rear the next generation, a hope that is often thwarted. DiCaprio, swathed in freshly scraped furs, is like some creature from a swirling myth, grunting compellingly through a series of ordeals: by arrow; by earth; by water; by blizzard. In one scene, as he emerges from a makeshift shelter in a hollowed-out horse, you can almost smell him before you hear him.
The Revenant is a formidable and extraordinary spectacle, awash in viscera and ice, yet – despite the austere beauty of Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography – there are still moments when its pile-up of cruelties feels overwrought.
The Big Short (15, 130 mins, ) – Adam McKay’s darkly comic film adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book – is about the handful of money men who anticipated the collapse of the US economy in 2007-8 before anyone else, and then made millions by betting against its good health. The first to smell something rotten in the vast US sub-prime mortgage market is Michael Burry (Christian Bale) – an oddball, workaholic hedge-fund manager with a penchant for heavy metal – who “shorts” the shares in an agreement with the banks. Others, who hear of his move – characters played by Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt and Steve Carell, all on sharp form – realise that he is on to something big.
The film tells a gripping story, while explaining the crisis in wittily accessible ways, including Margot Robbie opining on “sub-prime” from a bubble bath. How we should feel towards these canny visionaries of disaster remains something to ponder, but the analysis of the moral and economic hollow rings true.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.