Lashbrook Tabs

While exploring the uncharted wilderness in 1823, legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) sustains injuries from a brutal bear attack. When his hunting team leaves him for dead, Glass must utilize his survival skills to find a way back home while avoiding natives on their own hunt. Grief-stricken and fueled by vengeance, Glass treks through the wintry terrain to track down John Fitzgerald, the former confidant who betrayed and abandoned him.

Hugh Glass

Leonardo DiCaprio

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John Fitzgerald

Tom Hardy

Hawk

Forrest Goodluck

Bridger

Will Poulter

Andrew Henry

Domhnall Gleeson

Elk Dog

Duane Howard

It was shown partially in the trailer and if you haven’t seen the film, then you’ve probably heard about it. Leonardo DiCaprio, as Glass, gets into with a bear. Not just any bear, but a mean mama bear protecting her cubs. While Glass is beaten pretty bad, all that hurt put on him must’ve helped, because he uses the strength of that bear to recover from his injuries and start his epic quest for revenge. Sure, Glass doesn’t physically become a bear. But wearing its claws around his neck and its fur on his body, he sets out to avenge his slain son, making every mama bear proud. He even catches a fish barehanded (bear-handed?) and eats it raw.

For those with a Christian background, they’ll know that the Christian idea of baptism is a symbol itself for death and resurrection. Christians go down into the water to be buried and raise up out of it, restored to new life and resurrected. Glass is literally buried and rises from the grave. That symbol alone is powerful, but when it is repeated over and over, you get the idea that Iñárritu wants you to pay attention to it.

Glass is baptized in the film when he escapes from the Ree across the river, becoming completely immersed and then rising out of it to begin the next leg of his journey. Only moments later, Glass is again buried by the Pawnee who takes Glass’s disease-ridden body, builds a tomb for him, and helps Glass rise again as a renewed, healed man, another clear example of resurrection. Even later, Glass again “dies” and is buried inside his horse’s corpse, only to again rise anew from his grave the next day.

The most visually-apparent symbol in the film is the spiral, etched by Bridger on his canteen and which serves as an important plot device later in the film. The meaning of the spiral is one of the more interesting parts of the story. The spiral’s place in the film is paramount and most easily conveys The Revenant‘s themes of communion with God and nature. With it and all of the other symbols in the film, the movie is really an incredibly rich story. The Revenant can be watched and re-watched over and over again to see all of the creative ways these symbols are intertwined with this tale of revenge.