The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Alejandro González Iñárritu · a film in English, with passages in Arikara, Pawnee and French · 2015 · about 156 minutes, as released · after the story of Hugh Glass and in part on the novel by Michael Punke
Mode
Frontier survival and revenge tale filmed as immersive ordeal; endurance shown as duration, with visions laid over the naturalism
Mythos
The man taken for dead, buried by his companions and rising out of the earth; the second birth from the body of a horse; the return to judge, and the avenger who sets vengeance down at the river
Phase
One winter journey in four movements: the attack in the shallows and the flight, the bear and the burial, the crawl through the country, the return to the fort and the pursuit to the river
Presentation
Feature film, about 156 minutes, colour and widescreen; Emmanuel Lubezki’s natural light and wide lens at the face, long takes, a largely wordless lead, a sparse score of tones
Register
Close, cold and physical, breath, water, wind and wood at the front of the sound; terror in the set pieces, grandeur in the land, and a dream register for the dead
Scale
One man’s body across a winter country, with a fur trade and four peoples around him
Governing Proposition
A guide on a fur expedition of 1823 is mauled by a bear, watches his son killed by the man left to tend him, is buried alive and left for dead, and crawls back across the frozen country to find that man. The wager of the film is that endurance can be shown as duration, that a camera held at the face through the wound, the hunger and the cold can make the body’s time the film’s knowledge, and that a man taken for dead and rising out of the earth can carry the oldest shape of return.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
A party of fur trappers is camped by a river with its pelts when the Arikara attack. The camera does not cut. It passes from one man to the next through arrows and water, a trapper struck, a horse down, a boat pushed off, and in a single movement the expedition’s commerce turns to slaughter. Within ten minutes the film has reached terror, and it has shown its method: the audience is put among the bodies, at the distance of breath, and kept there. The survivors flee downriver.
Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is the party’s guide, travelling with his son Hawk, played by Forrest Goodluck. The captain is Andrew Henry, played by Domhnall Gleeson; among his men are John Fitzgerald, played by Tom Hardy, and Jim Bridger, played by Will Poulter. Behind them the Arikara chief Elk Dog, played by Duane Howard, is searching for a daughter taken from him, and his people buy horses with pelts to recover her. From the first scene every party in the film is trading in bodies.
Alejandro González Iñárritu directed the film from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith and himself, based in part on Michael Punke’s novel The Revenant (2002), which drew on the story of Hugh Glass, mauled by a grizzly in 1823 and left for dead by two men of a fur expedition. Emmanuel Lubezki photographed it, Stephen Mirrione edited it, and the music is by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, with Bryce Dessner. It was made for 20th Century Fox with New Regency, shot in Alberta and British Columbia and, for the late snow, in southern Argentina, and released in the United States on 25 December 2015, in wide release the following January. It runs about 156 minutes, and the film as released is the one scored here.
Movement II
Alone in the brush ahead of the party, Glass meets a bear. The sow attacks, and the film shows it in one unbroken shot: the man mauled, turned over, mauled again, the sow leaving and returning, the breath and the weight of the animal at the lens. Nothing is cut away from. The sequence is among the most dreadful of its decade, and it does more than shock: it makes the rest of the film’s time the time of the wound. From here the question is how long a body so broken takes to move, and the film will answer it in minutes on the screen.
The wound makes Glass a burden, and the burden makes Fitzgerald’s arithmetic. The party must move on, and Fitzgerald, left behind with Bridger and Hawk, reckons what the dying man costs him. He kills the boy, and Glass, unable to speak or rise, sees it. Then Glass is put into a grave alive and left for dead. The death of the son is the film’s hinge: it turns survival into a purpose and gives the crawl its law.
Here the film’s first hour ends, and it is the most compelled hour it has. The attack sets the flight, the flight puts Glass alone with the bear, the wound makes him a burden, the burden makes the murder, and the murder makes everything after it. The title is already at work. A man taken for dead has been buried by his companions, and what follows is his rising out of the earth. The pattern is the oldest one of return, and the film builds it into its plot, so that the grave is not an image of death but the place the story starts again.
Movement III
Glass crawls out of the grave. What follows is an ordeal in stages: the river and its rapids, raw liver, the cold of the nights, the sweat lodge. Each stage changes the body that carries it, and the film shows the change without words: what a man will eat, where he will sleep, what he will become to stay alive. DiCaprio’s performance is almost wordless and wholly physical, and the wide lens held at his face makes the audience keep the duration of every movement. The body’s time is the film’s knowledge, and the long takes are its instrument.
On the way Glass falls in with Hikuc, a Pawnee, and for a time the two travel together. Then Hikuc is found hanged at the camp of French trappers, with a sign on his chest. At the French camp Glass finds Powaqa, Elk Dog’s daughter, held by the trappers, and frees her. The rescue ties his revenge to the chief’s search and prepares the ending. Here the film’s finding is plainest: the trappers trade in pelts, the French in pelts and women, the Arikara in horses bought with pelts, and the sign on the hanged man puts the whole trade into words once.
The middle of the film is also where it gives. Several episodes are strong in themselves and could go without the film losing a fact it needs; they would take intensity with them rather than meaning. The visions, of Glass’s dead wife floating above the ground, of a ruined church with a fading mural and a bell, of a mountain of bison skulls, return to one statement, and their register, floating figures and symbolic architecture, is laid over the naturalism rather than grown from it. The film knows the body better than it knows the dream, and here the dream is given much of the time.
Movement IV
Glass goes over a cliff on horseback. The horse dies in the fall and he lives. That night he guts the animal and climbs naked inside it to keep alive till morning. When he comes out of the carcass he is born a second time. The scene is the film’s second resurrection and its plainest statement of what the title means: the grave and the horse are the two places from which the revenant rises, and they give the film its shape.
The making is load-bearing here, as everywhere. Lubezki’s photography holds natural light through cold and dark, at the edges of the day, with a consistency few films attempt; the set pieces are staged as continuous action in which camera, performers, horses, water and effects are joined so that the seams rarely show. Mirrione’s editing holds the long takes and paces the long middle with restraint, and the sound, breath, water, wind and wood, with the sparse tones of Sakamoto and Alva Noto, shapes feeling without melody. The mannerisms are the costs: breath fogging the lens, the repeated tilt up into the treetops.
The idiom was not new. Lubezki had made his light in Terrence Malick’s The New World and The Tree of Life, his floating continuous camera in Children of Men and Gravity, and he and Iñárritu had sustained their takes through Birdman. What was new was the scale of the wager: a studio epic with a star in nearly every frame, shot on location in deep cold, in natural light, at length, with the lens inches from the face. The frontier tale of endurance was older still, and Glass’s story had been filmed before, in Man in the Wilderness (1971). The departure is in the degree of immersion, and the stake was real.
Movement V
Glass reaches Fort Kiowa. Fitzgerald has gone, and the pursuit begins. Here the frame around the ordeal shows its grammar, which is a thriller’s: a dying captain, a pursuit through snow, a fight on a riverbank. Fitzgerald is drawn more as a villain who explains himself than as a man under the same law as Glass, and the dialogue is weakest where he speaks. The form that knew the body so exactly through the crawl has less to say about the question the ending asks.
On the river, with Fitzgerald beaten, Glass sets vengeance down, and the film states its meaning: revenge belongs to God. He pushes Fitzgerald downstream to the Arikara on the far bank, who kill him and pass Glass by; Elk Dog’s search is closed. The plot delivers the vengeance by other hands, and the renunciation that the film states is undone by the scene that stages it. The moral law is left ambiguous. Then Glass looks into the lens, and the film ends on his face and the sound of his breath: violence seen up close at the start, a man alone with breath at the close, one physics from the first scene to the last.
The film received twelve Academy Award nominations and won three, for Iñárritu’s direction, the second year running, for DiCaprio, and for Lubezki’s photography, his third in a row; it took more than half a billion dollars worldwide. Those are presence, not proof. Eleven years have kept it widely available and widely seen, and its bear sequence and its lead performance stay in common memory. Its meaning is largely given on a first viewing; what rewards return is the staging of its long takes. It stands as a reference for the survival film and for hardship on location as a mark of seriousness, and it stands on the strength of its making.
Act III · The Twelve
Run the subtractive test on the first hour and it finds nothing to cut. The attack in the shallows sets the expedition’s flight; the flight puts Glass alone in the brush with the bear; the wound makes him a burden, the burden makes Fitzgerald’s arithmetic, and the killing of Hawk gives the crawl its law. The journey that follows is an ordeal in stages, and each stage changes the body that carries it. Elk Dog’s search for his daughter is required, since it closes the ending. What gives lies in the middle: several episodes could go with a loss of intensity rather than of fact, and the visions of the wife and of the ruined church say one thing more than once.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The disclosure can be stated, and it holds: the fur trade is a chain of extraction in which every party trades in bodies. The trappers trade in pelts; the French in pelts and women; the Arikara buy horses with pelts to recover a stolen daughter; and a sign hung on a hanged Pawnee’s body puts the verdict once in words. Beside it stands a second disclosure, of the body: what a man will eat, where he will sleep, what he will become to stay alive, shown without speech and counted in full as disclosure through image. Held below the gate because the film’s stated meaning, that revenge belongs to God, is undercut by a plot that delivers the vengeance by other hands, and because much of its weight is a rendering of cold, pain and scale, a mood more than a meaning.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Height and frequency are both high. The opening attack, carried by a camera that passes from man to man through arrows and water, reaches terror within ten minutes. The bear, in one unbroken shot of a man mauled, turned over and mauled again, is among the most dreadful sequences of its decade. The land is sublime in the old sense, scaled against a crawling man: frozen rivers, cedar forests, an avalanche watched from far off, a meteor across the night, bison and wolves, a mountain of bison skulls in a vision. The cliff and the night inside the horse rise again in the last hour. Held below the top because the elevation is almost all of one kind, physical dread and natural grandeur, and the visionary passages reach for a transport the film does not earn.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The myth is built. The title names it and the plot carries it: a man taken for dead, buried by his companions, rising out of the earth, reborn naked from the body of a horse, returning to judge. The grave, the crawl out, the horse and the return are the hinges on which the story turns, not ornaments laid on it, and the revenant’s two births give the film its shape. Held below the gate by what is laid over that structure: the ruined church with its fading mural and its bell, the tree that holds against the wind, the wife floating above the ground, all allusive rather than load-bearing; and the avenger’s pattern, summoned throughout, is set down at the river without a form in which the setting down becomes myth in its turn.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The departure is in the making of a studio epic. A large picture with a star in nearly every frame was shot on location in deep cold, in natural light at the edges of the day, at length, with a wide lens held inches from the actor’s face, close enough for his breath to fog the glass. That was a costly wager, and the stake is credited. The idiom it staked on was proved: Lubezki’s light in Terrence Malick’s The New World and The Tree of Life, his floating continuous camera in Children of Men and Gravity, the sustained takes of Iñárritu’s own Birdman. The story is the frontier tale of endurance and revenge, told of Glass before in Man in the Wilderness (1971). The turn is in the degree of immersion more than in kind.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Change the form and the film loses most of what it knows, which is the body’s time: how long a crawl takes, what cold does, how near breath and blood come. Cut for coverage, lit in a studio and shot from a distance on long lenses, the same story would become an adventure watched from outside. The long takes that will not cut away from the mauling, the hunger and the river are the argument, and the wide lens at the face makes the audience keep the wound’s duration. Held off the top by the frame around the ordeal: the revenge plot is told in a thriller’s grammar, a dying captain, a pursuit, a fight on a riverbank, and the visions are set in a form borrowed from elsewhere. The form knows the body better than it knows the moral question at the end.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Evidence over promise, and the evidence is eleven years. The return yield of the craft is real: the long takes reward study of their staging, the coordination of camera, action, water and light. Later criticism has returned to the film’s production, to its lead performance and to its treatment of Native people; the Arikara and Pawnee figures speak their own languages, which is a gain. What holds the axis low is semantic depth. The meaning is largely given on first viewing, and the spectacle that carries the first encounter gives less on return; the Native characters’ own perspective stays mostly in the service of Glass’s story. No body of interpretation yet shows the film inexhaustible. The forecast is modest.
Score: 7.2 / 10
The field is the cinema of the 2010s. The intrinsic force is real: the film carried the immersive method of natural light and long takes, then held to art cinema, into the scale and the stars of the studio epic, and made bodily endurance itself a mainstream spectacle. It is a synthesis, of Malick’s light, the floating continuous camera of Children of Men and Gravity and the sustained takes of Birdman, and its force lies in the joining. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: in eleven years it has been very widely seen, and it stands as a reference for the survival film and for hardship on location as a mark of seriousness; a redirection of what came after that does not belong equally to its sources is not shown. Prizes and gross are presence, not reach.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Survival is weighed on form, then presence, then fabric, across eleven years. Form: the film as released survives whole, digital at source, with nothing lost or replaced. Presence is very wide for its span: a large worldwide release, continuous availability at home and on streaming, prizes that keep it in reference, and a performance and a bear sequence that stay in common memory. Wide presence earns a tenth and no more, and eleven years demonstrate little: the span sits below the thirteen years at which the figure could open further. The surface fixed to its moment is small but present: the computer-made bear and some digital compositing belong to the technology of 2015, though they are less exposed than most effects work of that year.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The making is load-bearing: the film’s knowledge is carried by its craft more than by its script. Lubezki’s photography sustains natural light through cold and dark with a consistency few films attempt; the opening attack and the bear are staged as continuous action of great complexity, camera, performers, horses, water and effects joined so that the seams rarely show. Stephen Mirrione’s editing holds the long takes and paces the long middle with restraint. The sound, breath, water, wind and wood, and the sparse score of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto shape feeling without melody. Leonardo DiCaprio’s largely wordless performance is a physical command. The charges: mannerisms, the breath on the lens, the repeated tilt up into the treetops, the visions’ borrowed look; and dialogue that is weak where the antagonist explains himself.
Score: 8.5 / 10
One physics governs most of the film: nature indifferent and absolute, bodies breakable and stubborn, and every human party, trapper, French, Arikara and Pawnee, under the same law of need. Take the two most distant elements, the opening battle in the shallows and the last look into the lens, and they obey it: violence seen up close, then a man left alone with his breath. The range is wide, from the documentary density of the crawl to the dream of the church, and the law holds across most of it. What strains it: the visions lay floating figures and symbolic architecture over the naturalism rather than growing from it; Fitzgerald is drawn more as a thriller’s villain than as a man under Glass’s law; and the ending, which renounces revenge and then has it delivered, leaves the moral law ambiguous.
Score: 7.9 / 10
Orders present: the natural world, the body, the family (a father and son, a lost wife, the Arikara chief’s daughter), labour and commerce in the fur trade and its company, the clash of nations among American trappers, French traders, Arikara and Pawnee, and the sacred. Three are held firmly in one structure: the father’s grief drives the body through the land. Commerce and the nations are shown in action, in the pelts, the stolen horses and the burned Pawnee village remembered, and their chain of trade is the film’s clearest finding. What holds the axis low is integration: those orders stay background to one man’s ordeal rather than parts of its meaning, and the sacred is imagery, a church and a dead wife’s voice, without a faith the film examines.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.8 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 8.5, then The Sublime at 8.4, then The Archetypal Deep, The Living Form and The Inner Law at 7.9. A making that carries the film’s knowledge more than its script does, natural light through cold and dark and set pieces staged as continuous action; terror and grandeur reached early and often, from the attack in the shallows to the night inside the horse; a myth of burial and return built into the plot’s hinges; a form whose long takes are the body’s time; and one law of need from the first battle to the last breath.
Limiting Dimension
The Bottomless Well and The Encompassed at 7.2: a meaning largely given on first viewing, with a yield on return that lies in the craft; and orders of commerce and of nations shown in action but kept as background to one man’s ordeal, with the sacred left as imagery. Next above them, Pressure on Tradition at 7.4: a real force of synthesis, carrying an idiom already proved into the studio epic, with a reach not yet distinct from that of its sources.
The Necessity Cap clears at 7.6 against a threshold of 7.5, by a tenth. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 7.9, The Made at 8.5, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Archetypal Deep at 7.9, The Imperishable at 7.8, The Unconcealment at 7.6, The Swerve at 7.6 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.4 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Bottomless Well, 7.2, and Pressure on Tradition, 7.4, both below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.8, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of The Revenant as released in 2015, the theatrical cut, about 156 minutes, from the attack in the shallows to the last look into the lens: directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu, photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, edited by Stephen Mirrione, with music by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, with Bryce Dessner. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. The film is in English with passages in Arikara, Pawnee and French; subtitles are an aid rather than the object, and nothing here is charged to them. No line of dialogue is held to the word, so none is quoted, and speech is described. Michael Punke’s novel (2002) and the historical record of Hugh Glass are not part of the work and are named as its sources. Accounts of how the film was made are not the object; only what they produce on the screen is judged. Details that could not be verified, among them whether any other version of the film exists, the words of the sign on the hanged man, the camera and lenses used, whether it was shot in story order, and the reported costs and conditions of the production, are not given.