THE BIG ISSUE The Big Issue - 11 January 2016

WorldMags.net SCREEN FILM / EDWARD LAWRENSON Nature in the raw Leonardo DiCaprio captivates in this ferocious and dark tale of revenge from the director of Birdman O ne of the more colourful stories to have emerged from the making of The Revenant is that Leonardo DiCaprio eats raw bison liver on camera. Directing this tale of Hugh Glass, a fur-trapper struggling to survive in the snowy depths of the Midwest at the start of the 19th century, Alejandro González Iñárritu isn’t one for convenient fakery. Filming only in natural light in sub- zero remote locations, the 52-year-old put cast and crew through punishing extremes. Complaints about conditions on set made the ﬁlm one of the most talked about last year. Producers rebufed the most outland- ish of such reports but there’s no doubt The Revenant was a tough, demanding shoot. This is the kind of ﬁlm in which sinking one’s teeth into an uncooked bovine organ amounts to just another day at the oice. But the main reason that this scene feels so convincing is that it looks that way. From the gloopy substance of DiCaprio’s eating material to the disgust that ﬂinches on the face of this conﬁrmed vegetarian as he swallows, the moment gives off an unappetising whif of authenticity. And the same is true of the rest of the ﬁlm. In an is pounced on, then clawed at by a creature the size of a minivan, his body tossed around like a ragdoll. It’s technically brill- iant and viscerally intense, and the assault leaves Glass grievously injured. Assuming he’ll succumb to his wounds, fellow trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) volunteers to stay with him, while the rest of the party press ahead. Except Glass doesn’t die, so Fitzgerald, keen to join the others, kills Hawk and drags Glass into a shallow grave. And yet Glass is still alive. What’s more, he vows revenge against Fitzgerald. Dragging himself out of his grave, he begins a long pursuit of his son’s killer – across those sweeping vistas, through icy river torrents and avalanche-prone mountain- scapes, encountering along the way murderous racism from French trappers and glimmers of redemption from Native American wanderers. The result is a gripping blend of psycho- logical drama and epic adventure, brutal and bloody but underpinned with a delicate lyricism. Barely saying a word, DiCaprio is extraordinary. It’s a committed, compelling and utterly convinc- ing performance, one that is sure to bag him his long-coveted Oscar. If only for eating raw bison liver, he deserves it. era when so much on-screen spectacle is magicked up by computers, the picture has a ﬁerce, forbidding, deﬁantly old-fashioned sense of realism: the landscapes boast an icy majesty that still can’t be equalled by CGI. And if the actors look cold and dirty and fed up, their breaths steaming up the lens of ace cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, then that’s probably because they were at the time of the shoot. This astonishingly vivid sense of wilderness matters because nature plays such a big part in the story of The Revenant. Hiding behind a wiry tangle of beard, DiCaprio is Glass, one of the fabled mountain men who explored the West in advance of white ‘settlers’. After he and his fellow trappers ﬂee an attack by Native American warriors, Martial artist: Donnie Yen Glass, accompanied by his plays a Wing Chun master FINAL REEL... half-Pawnee teenage son Hawk, Ip Man 3 is the third and ﬁnal ﬁlm leads his exhausted comrades further up- in the lavish Cantonese-language biopic of country. And there, in woods of primeval martial arts grandmaster Yip Man (whose pupils included Bruce Lee). Hong Kong star Donnie creepiness, Glass is set upon by a bear. It’s for this bear attack that The Revenant Yen gives a ﬁne performance as the ageing will likely be remembered. In a long Wing Chun master. Look out for a cameo from sequence without any obvious cuts, Glass Mike Tyson as a corrupt property developer. THE BIG ISSUE / p33 / January 11-17 2016 WorldMags.net

THE BIG ISSUE The Big Issue - 11 January 2016 | Page 33