That The Revenant is skillfully directed, visually enchanting and powerfully acted will surprise no one. Alejandro González Iñárritu is a skillful director, Emmanuel Lubezki is an enchanting photographer, Leo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy are powerful actors. For their collective efforts, they will all receive requisite Academy Award nominations; some of them will likely win.

Much has been made about the efforts that went into making this film. That Inarritu wanted to shoot in chronological order. That Lubezki used only natural light in his camerawork. That Leo was put through grueling physical and dietary exertions. Through it all the weather was terrible, the crew was miserable, and everything was, as they say, “hell.” It’s that kind of movie.

But despite these laudatory realities, The Revenant still falls into an unusual critical trap. There is an uninspired quality of dumbness to this movie. I found myself wandering away from the film somewhere after the two hour mark. It’s fundamentally flawed in the architecture, but what it builds on that architecture is spectacular. The question thus becomes: Should we overlook these larger, fundamental problems because it is so damn good for so long? Or, given the high standards the film creates for itself, are these integral flaws to be measured with greater weight than in, say, Daddy’s Home?

If it’s the former, then this is a very good film, not a great film but a near-miss, and one that deserves to be seen and celebrated. If it’s the latter, then The Revenant is little more than a beautiful looking bit of emptiness; an exercise in watching DiCaprio participate in acting exercises in front of one of the great visual artists of our time.

That’s a tough call. But either way, for the second year in a row, Alejandro González Iñárritu has made a film teems with life and vigor. The men in this film live and die with a wildness that is rare in the movies, and watching The Revenant charges the batteries, for sure. What else to feel when watching Leo DiCaprio scrum for his life as he is mauled by a grizzly bear for three rounds of growling and mowling and throat-ripping gore? The bear attack is the central set-up to the film’s plot, and I would encourage folks to see The Revenant if only for this scene. Rest assured you have never seen anything like it before.

The man that bear mauls is Hugh Glass. Glass is an expert wilderness man and has a half-native son, Hawk. They are traveling in the Montana/South Dakota area of the frontier in the 1820s with a military expedition when Glass is mauled to within an inch of his life by the bear. The leader of this expedition, Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) refuses to leave Glass behind, and the men make a stretcher to carry him back to their fort. That journey is one of incredible difficulty, though, and the likelihood of survival for Glass is so slim, that Henry determines he will leave Glass behind. Two men stay behind with Glass to await his death, bury him properly, and then make the journey back on their own.

John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) volunteers for this job, and when the opportunity arises, Fitzgerald kills Hawk, with Glass watching, and leaves Glass half buried in his grave. Of course, Glass does not die. He crawls out from his grave, unable to speak or walk. Which sets up the rest of The Revenant, Glass holding on to life for the purpose of exacting revenge on the man who killed his son. He crosses winter landscapes, mostly alone, skirting dangerous groups of natives with the passion of a monomaniac.

There’s not much else to say about the plot or story or emotions of The Revenant. That it is based on a true story is fascinating, but of little concern. I connected to Leo for a while, and Glass’s pain as a father. But as his work became more “physical” or “raw” or whatever promotional term one chooses, I also found myself having less concern for his character. Limit pushing performances are a tricky tightrope to walk. There are long stretches of The Revenant that feature DiCaprio alone onscreen, participating in one horrific or gross or desperate act of survival after another. These scenes are all individually fascinating to watch, and the thought of making them outside in natural light in the winter is riveting.

So why did I stop caring about Glass and Fitzgerald and their epic revenge battle? Why did I get lost in the photography and the landscapes rather than remain engaged in what should be an emotional, visceral yet basic story of revenge for a murder?

It’s possible that revenge stories are just getting a little boring. Inarritu makes no effort to plumb Glass for emotional depth, and there is none. This is a movie about sheer physicality: heat, food, water and pain. DiCaprio does about as well as he can with the demands of this task. But how many long shots of DiCaprio looking over the frozen landscape do we really need? After the bear attack and the decision to leave Glass behind, the scenes unfold with diminishing returns.

Now, mind, these returns may diminish over the three hour run time of this film, but they start out at such great heights that even in the end I was not completely dissatisfied. There’s so much beauty in this film. Just looking at the mountains and the trees as Lubezki captures them left me with joy.

A remarkable job is done capturing the landscapes in their 1820s fullness (Lubezki might just win his third consecutive Oscar for his photography). But even in the excellent craft of shooting this film, Inarritu and Lubezki take things just a little too far, breaking the magic and leaving me cold. There is a notable long take in The Revenant that takes place in a battle early in the film. It starts with grace and poetry, sweeping from man to man, white to native and back, as a skirmish begins. But what starts out with life and beauty becomes so long, and so obvious, that the magic it held wears off, and leaves a tedious, jarring experience that failed to make a case for its inclusion. Yes, it’s an amazing technical feat of photography, but to what end?

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