While Elk Dog's criticism of Toussaint and his men is a superb moment of high drama, the deadpan reaction of Toussaint's interpreter regarding the Arikara chief's French skills is worthy of a few chuckles.
Fitzgerald's bizarre soliloquy about his father finding God in the form of a fat squirrel he ate when he was starving. Bridger's utterly bewildered reaction sells it.
There's a terrifying scene where a bear almost mauls Hugh Glass to death, but when the movie was first released, there was a rumour going around that he gets raped by a bear.
The Fox movie, based on Michael Punke’s “novel of revenge,” takes place near Yellowstone, Montana, in 1823. It begins with the same bloody incident that launches the book– the gruesome attack by a grizzly bear on trapper Hugh Glass. Innaritu has taken essentially the following sections of Punke’s book and enlarged them into a feasting by animal on man. The bear flips Glass over on his belly and molests him– dry humps him actually– as he nearly devours him. How Innaritu and DiCaprio did this is a movie mystery because it is as real feeling as Bruce the shark in “Jaws” 40 years ago. It’s as real looking as it could be, and maybe the most frightening moment I’ve seen in a film in eons.. -Roger Friedman, Nov 29, 2015
Fitzgerald, now a fugitive, confronts Captain Henry at gunpoint and asks what he's doing out in the wilderness. The captain coldly informs Fitzgerald he intends to drag the man back to camp and have him tried for murder (presumably to result in a hanging). The response is an infinitely dry:
