The Revenant

In their second collaboration as director and composer, Alejandro González Iñarritu and Ryuichi Sakamoto carve out an icy American Western for the ears and eyes alike.

Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio in his Oscar-winning performance) is part of a band of fur trappers exploring and hunting around the punishing snow-covered South Dakota wilderness in 1823, along with his half-Pawnee son Hawk. When he is brutally mauled by a bear (in a primal, terrifying, jaw-dropping sequence, seamlessly rendered in CGI), left to die by the other men and his son mercilessly murdered by the cowardly trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), Glass begins a brutal and epic quest for revenge and retribution.

Alejandro González Iñarritu who won his second consecutive Best Director Oscar and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (winning his third Oscar here), have created an immersive and at times brutal American Western.

The score from Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto (working with Iñárritu again after his contribution to the soundtrack for Babel in 2006) incorporates electronica musician Alva Noto’s icy synth sounds alongside contributions from The National’s guitarist Bryce Dessner, creating a haunting soundtrack that creates a discordant wall of sound that soars with the films majestic and unsparing landscape. The varied genres within the score are a testament to Sakamoto’s musical career which has also spanned genres ranging from electronica to synth-pop to classical.