Movies in History: The Revenant

 Newspaper article with C.M Russell depiction of the attack of the bear upon Glass. This depiction is probably more correct than any depicted in film.

This movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio is currently touring, and as anyone following movies knows, its a fictionalized telling of the legendary grizzly bear attack upon trapper Hugh Glass and his subsequent abandonment by his companions. Glass, by any measure, has to be one of the toughest men who ever lived.

So how does the movie hold up, in terms of history?

Well, not bad, but not perfect.

Still, better than the 1971 Man In  The Wilderness, based on the same event, by a long margin, and quite good in some surprising ways.

Okay, let's first look at the real life Glass.

Glass was a frontiersman born in the Province of Pennsylvania, ie., colonial Pennsylvania, in 1780.  1780 is obviously rather late in the colonial period, as the Revolution was well under way at that time, but it is relevant in the context of exactly how early of Western frontiersman Glass was.  Glass was born at a time when the British could claim him as a subject, as could the fledgling United States.  His parents were Scots Irish from Ulster, putting him in a demographic that supplied a lot of frontiersmen.  His early history is murky, but he seems to have moved West, perhaps to Texas, while still a young man and he married a Pawnee woman at that time.  He was even part of a Pawnee delegation that met with met with representatives of the United States in 1821.

A year later he is to be bound with the Ashley Henry Party, a very significant enterprise undertaken by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company which has just been the subject of a post on Wyoming Fact and Fiction.  Rather than try to go into the history of that enterprise, I'll just refer the reader to that post, which was just made the the other day.

Glass became famous, of course, as he was badly mauled by a grizzly bear on the Grand River in present day South Dakota in 1823.  Indeed, he was already a wounded man at the time that occurred, as he'd been shot that prior May in a raid by Arikara's upon the party's camp, but he'd apparently recovered in the intervening months.  Badly injured he was expected to die.  Thomas Fitzpatrick and a young Jim Bridger were left behind to stay with him, but left him for dead, later claiming they were attacked by Arikara's and had to retreat from the location. At any rate, the left Glass, who managed to revive himself sufficiently, in spite of being in horrible condition and having a broken leg, who made it 200 miles down river to Ft. Kiowa.

A truly amazing story, the details of which make it much more amazing than the short synopsis I've provided here.

Well, how does this compare, in terms of history, to the film The Revenant?

First let me note that simply as a film, The Revenant is very well done.  Filmed with all natural light in spectacular scenery, the film stands out as a very good film. That doesn't make it good history of course, but it should be noted. This is all the more the case as some of the film is quite surreal, and intentionally so, something that a popular movie very rarely gets away with.

Okay, having noted that, let's take a look at the film in history. The film gets some things right, indeed very right.  In other places it departs significantly from the true history of of the story and in some ways that are fairly significant.  Let's look first at what the movie gets right.

In terms of material details the film is very well done.  The weapons in the film are period correct.  This includes not only the flintlock rifles and pistols, but also the edged weapons.  It also, and quite correctly, depicts traditional Indian weapons in use at the time, and in use very effectively, which is not always the case in films depicting this period.  A scene depicting an Arikara attack early in the film does a very good job showing high volume of fire on the part of the Native Americans, which is something that is well accounted for in the historical record.

Even more amazing, the details concerning animal use and consumption throughout the film are unabashedly shown and shown correctly.  Film has always been bad about demonstrating this and over time as people have become more and more squeamish about real life and nature this has continued to be the case except as to humans themselves. But the fact that all the populations depended upon hunting to survive, that this is a trapping party, etc., is shown very realistically.

The use of boats by parties on tributaries of the Missouri is also nicely depicted.  

Clothing is done well as well, showing a mix of Euro-American clothing and animal skin clothing, but in a worn fashion and by subjects who are often dirty from living outdoors.  In older films attempting to depict this, and particularly on television, the subjects are often depicted as being absurdly clean, which is not the case for people who live continually outdoors.

As an odd detail, Glass was in fact nicknamed "The Revenant" following his return, that term applying to people who have returned after a long absence or from seeming death.

So, all in all, very well done on material details.

So where does the film do poorly?

A notable departure from historical reality is that events in this film seem to take place pretty uniformly in the Fall and Winter and in high Rockies.  In terms of appearance, it would appear that most of the events depicted take place in the Canadian Rockies.  In reality, however, this expedition was very wide ranging and while it did range into the Rockies, Glass was attacked in rolling country in South Dakota, territory that is nothing like the Rockies in terms of appearance.  A lot of the terrain shown in the film is spectacularly wet, if not covered by snow.

Indeed, the bear attack scene in the film takes place in something that's very obviously bordering on a temperate rain forest, while in reality the bear attack occurred on the Great Plains.  It's hard to grasp for modern audiences that grizzly bears were a plains animal, but they were. The attack is depicted correctly in terms of it being done by a mother grizzly with two cubs, however.

In terms of Glass' six week trip while horribly wounded, the trip was both more arduous and less.  In the film Glass encounters continual stress from hostile Indians and engages in some amazing physical feats.  A few of those are in fact based on actual incidents, including feeding on a buffalo killed by wolves.  But for the most part Glass, while suffering immensely, was aided by the Indians he encountered.  His trip was additionally partly by raft, although it was partly early on by crawling.

Which gets to the more arduous part.  In reality, Glass was not only mauled by the bear, but sustained a broken leg in the attack, which he set himself.  He also had to contest with the threat of infection, which he attacked by allowing maggots to eat the dead portions of his flesh.  

Perhaps more significantly in terms of the history of his ordeal, the human elements inserted in the film depart from reality in some significant ways.  He was at a camp attacked by Arikara's, and indeed lost his life in an Arikara attack ten years later, but that attack was some months prior to the bear incident.  He wasn't traveling with a son.  Jim (Jeb in the film) Bridger was one of the men who abandoned him, but when Glass tracked him down he forgave him for having abandoned him.  He more or less did the same thing with Thomas Fitzpatrick, who wasn't the lout described in the film, and who went on to have a role in negotiating at least one Indian treaty later on.

A peculiarity of the story, which must come from the plot line of the novel, is to provide a rationale for the Arikara attack in the form of an Arikara chieftain's daughter having been kidnapped by white trappers. We later learn that the kidnappers are a party of French trappers show are generally shown to be less than reputable.  This is a bit peculiar as its the only film I've seen in which French trappers are cast in a negative light, and in reality they generally had fairly good relations with native populations.  The Pawnee are shown in a positive light, which is at least a break from the treatment they generally get in film for some odd reason.

All in all, it's a good film, and of course it is a work of fiction, just based on fact.  The positive points, from an historical prospective, are quite good.  The areas where the film doesn't hold up will not bother most audiences, but they might irritate the historically minded viewer.

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Related Pages:

Movies In History: The List