Newly Oscar-garlanded, Alejandro G. Iñárritu might have taken the easy option with his next feature. An intimate drama set around a Manhattan coffee shop or a Mauritius-set comedy caper, perhaps. He has not done either of those things. Proof? Here's the first teaser trailer for 19th century-set survival tale The Revenant, in which the Mexican filmmaker has raised the levels of technical difficulty from 'Birdman' to something we can't even quantify without using the word "hoooooboy". Click below to see what we mean.
That blistering intro offers the perfect entre into the brutal, bleak world Iñárritu has created, and two minutes that should have you hungering for a lot more. There's an impressionistic, almost Apocalypse Now-like aura to the visuals and sound design, and the kinetic, first-person camerawork bears the distinctive stamp of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. Here the collaborators behind the camera worked only with available light, restricting shooting days in the Canadian wilderness to as little as four hours. Those gruelling working conditions look like bearing fruits in remarkable vistas and a sense of sheer, toe-tearing cold. This could be the closest a movie takes you to lying in the fish finger drawer at Iceland.
Inspired by the true story of Hugh Glass and adapted from a novel by Michael Punke, a fur trapper mauled by a bear in the North American wilds and left for dead by his fellow hunters, **The Revenant **sees Leonardo DiCaprio grizzled and bearded in the lead role. "I ain't afraid to die anymore," he intones in voiceover. "I've done it already." If that quote in isolation makes it sound like a zombie movie, there's an element of the undead in his thirst for blood. Somehow, through sheer strength of will, the incapacitated Glass hauls himself toward civilisation and the chance to avenge himself on the men who abandoned him (Tom Hardy and Will Poulter). There's also the not-so-small matter of local Native Americans to negotiate.
Says its director in a statement: "This is the adventure of a man who survived the unimaginable through a long exterior journey to seek revenge and an inner journey to understand and recover all that he has lost. I wanted to tell the story without relying on special effects. I spent five years searching for the most powerful and unexplored landscapes, where we shot using only natural light on the rocky terrain of the remote wilderness of Canada, for a long period of time to evoke a very visceral response for the viewers."
The Revenant, a likely sixth Oscar nod for its lead, lands in UK cinemas on January 15.