Camera Shots in "The Revenant"

Camera Shots in the film The Revenant (2005)

From Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

          I decided to view the camera shots in The Revenant because it has some of the most beautiful and varied shots in any movie I have watched. This movie always captures my attention with its stunning scenery and tense-filled scenes between the tight conflicts of the characters out in the wilderness where only the strong-willed can survive. 

          The movie began with a couple of establishing shots demonstrating the terrors that the main character, Hugh Glass, had experienced when the village of son and wife were devastated through fires. The shot shown below is one of the establishing shots and the viewer can see Glass cradling a child in his arms as the village and people in the background have experienced mortal tragedy. This shot sets the tone for the rest of the movie as being morbid and unforgiving and gives us our first glance into Glass's sad story.

          Close up shots are plentiful in the movie as Glass and the main antagonist ,John Fitzgerald,  are closely examined through the camera in order to better understand their motives for doing what they believe is right in the movie. The first close up shot shows Fitzgerald's face as he stares into the snowy woods. This shot shows that Fitzgerald is experiencing major anxiety and uneasiness as he left Glass for dead despite still being conscious. No doubt that Fitzgerald is half guilty about what he did despite reasoning that he needed to do it in order to survive the trek back to home base. The next shot is that of Glass has he attempts to crawl out of his grave. Since the shot is able to display all of the expressions on the character's face, we can see clearly see the pain and suffering that he is experiencing as he has to battle the cold, the infected wounds throughout his body due to a bear attack, and the fear of the Arikara Native Americans poaching around the area in pursuit of the Americans dealing fur including Glass. 

          This high angle shot helps to show the entire situation and the serious trouble that Glass is in. With the dead bear on top of him and nobody in sight, the viewer believes that Glass is in an inescapable predicament. This angle also helps to compare the size of the bear to the size of Glass. It makes it hard to believe that he was actually able to kill the bear after being mauled a couple of times during the duration of the fight . 

          This next camera shot is an extreme long shot and it displays the snowy landscape with two individuals, Glass and a random Native American he met on his journey. The long distanced shot aims to prove that the two characters are undeniably weaker and smaller than the encompassing and unforgiving environment that they are currently trekking. The extreme long shot helps the director show that the conflict between characters is not the sole problem of the story but rather the surroundings that the characters find themselves in which causes them to take drastic decisions that are life or death dependent. 

          Looking back into the movie, I recognize that some of the reason that the movie is so emotionally attaching between me, the viewer, and the characters is because of the camera angles. As I previously mentioned, the close up angles allow us to enter the personal bubble of the character which shows the emotions that the character may be feeling and we'll be right in the character's thoughts. All of the further distanced shots help to place the viewer in the correct perspective in terms of what the characters had to deal with in the immense environment that they had to track and survive on before returning the home base.