Please note this is obviously not a proper review and there are no actual spoilers herein. OK it certainly is a ball bustin' blood fest, some kind of revisionist western, white man colonialist critique, it has the bear and it's an Oscar vehicle. Does any of that make it a bad film? Probably but I kind of like bad films with incredible cinematography, a creative mythology sub-story and superheated hype. One key scene did it for me. Amongst the gore and pain pornography the Revenant himself is trapped in some dreamlike agony. Outside a ruined Spanish style church, walls covered in icons he hugs his half blood son, back from the dead. The terrain is bleak, the church a broken mockery and the camera slips back to show the two figures in front of the ruin. Through the fractured walls and far in the distance a golden and green valley can be seen nestled between two rugged mountains. Hope is out there, unreachable and far beyond the corrupt church building that blocks their view and scars the natural landscape. The Native Americans stay away but this is their land, not the white man's and certainly not some imported Middle Eastern God's. In the end corruption and revenge seem to do best, at least for short periods of time but it's no way to live your life.
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