'The Revenant' starring Leonardo DiCaprio boasts characters so tough they make Bear Grylls look like a soft-heeled stamp collector, writes Sue de Groot If you have never taken the time to think about what you would do in the event of a grizzly bear attack, The Revenant will change your priorities. The centrepiece of this extraordinary film involves Leonardo DiCaprio being thoroughly savaged by a bear the size of a Volkswagen Golf. It's similar to what would happen if you threw Barbie to a doll-hating pit bull, but with more blood and drool and far bigger claws and teeth and thrusting furry haunches.There are, as it happens, dozens of websites offering help. In its list of tips for handling encounters with grizzlies, US magazine Outside advises: "Know how to distinguish between defensive aggression and predatory aggression" (does it make any difference?) and "Be prepared: carry bear spray".story_article_left1Since The Revenant is set in the North American wilds in the early 1800s, fur hunter Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) has access to neither bear spray nor the internet. He survives the attack - barely - but this is by no means the end of his troubles. Without going into detail (some things must be seen to be believed) I can tell you that Glass has to endure worse hardship than has ever been dreamt of by the combined creators of Survivor, Fear Factor and The Hunger Games. It is obvious that The Revenant is based on a true story because fiction would never go this far. Even Cormac McCarthy would cry "Hold, enough!"Glass can't shout because the bear pretty much ripped his throat out. He can't do much of anything, really, because of what the bear did to the rest of him. He is left for dead by his fellow hunters, who also take his rifle; one of them does something much worse.Having witnessed the much worse thing is what keeps Glass from falling apart. The thirst for revenge can give a man superhuman strength, and somehow he keeps going through ice and snow and falls and fever and rapids and brutal battles and disembowelled ponies and all manner of other obstacles in his quest to find the evil Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy).It is probably for the best that Glass hardly talks - except for a few effortful croaks here and there and some dream sequences where he speaks Pawnee - because if he were the voluble sort with undamaged vocal chords he would probably be spouting soliloquies about slings and arrows and whether it was really all worth it. Thankfully, we are spared this sort of verbal self-examination, and DiCaprio's performance is the better for it.As writer-director Alejandro Iñárritu keeps telling anyone who will listen, DiCaprio acts with his eyes. The Academy should award two Best Actor Oscars this year, if you ask me - one to DiCaprio's right eye and one to his left.Without making any predictions, it seems inevitable that Iñárritu will pull off another hat-trick and take this year's gold statues for best picture, best director and best screenplay, just as he did last year for Birdman. And if cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki doesn't make it three in a row (he won for Birdman last year and Gravity in 2014), I'll eat a bear.Using only natural light (which meant being able to film for no more than a couple of hours a day in the frozen forests of the north) Lubezki turns tree canopies into vaulted cathedrals and bleak tundra into Elysian fields. Such visual splendour is not just breathtaking to behold, it works to counterbalance the horrible mortal coil on which Glass has to keep crawling.Watching a broken man in beard and bearskin assailed by all the forces of hell for two and a half hours might not sound like everyone's idea of fun, but The Revenant is a dazzling film that unfurls an epoch neglected by history books. With minimal exposition and only the merest whisper of sentimentality, we learn of the travails faced by exploited hunters (they worked for bosses who took their pelts and charged them for everything else) trying to get by in a land fought over by warring indigenous tribes and invaders from multiple countries. Glass and his fellow fur men make Bear Grylls look like a soft-heeled stamp collector.So, if you come out of the cinema determined to be better prepared for grizzly bears, the most popular type of spray seems to be "Pepper Power Bear Deterrent". It comes in a can with an orange label on which is a picture of a grizzly wearing a coy expression and the words: "Works on all bear species." Don't go down to the woods without it.Rating: 3/5..