“The Revenant” is one western film deserving of 70mm.
Unlike the locked room drama “The Hateful Eight,” which is projected in that format in select theaters, Alejandro G. Innaritu portrays a sprawling, desolate early American wilderness with visual flourishes both elaborate and spare and deserving of widescreen viewing.
It is set in a world of towering forests, turbulent rivers and an endless and stark frozen landscape.
It is an environment familiar from Terrence Malick’s “The New World,” about settlers in Virginia, by “Revenant” director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki, who also filmed Malick’s “Tree of Life” and Innaritu’s “Birdman.” “Revenant” shares their fluid sense of perspective and sweeping visual strokes.
