The 23-track score is a patient listen, a droning, ambient experience short on cathartic moments, instead building an awestruck sense of both terror and beauty. The buried orchestral chords, bass rumble, and thousands of pizzicato needle-pricks on “Killing Hawk” recall something from a David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti score. Sakamoto, Noto, and Dessner may not have been trekking through the taiga, but they reinforce the chilled winds adroitly. “If we ended up in green screen with coffee and everybody having a good time, everybody will be happy, but most likely the film would be a piece of shit,” Iñárritu explained. The rough, snowy landscapes of northern Canada and the extreme southern tip of Argentina meant daylight was scarce - and yet they struggled through the cold to shoot only using natural light.

According to Iñárritu, the cast and crew would spend nearly half of each shoot day just traversing mountains and forests to get to locations. The Revenant succeeds in part because director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki embraced the harsh physical reality of their film, and as such, the viewer experiences the world along with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass. This quality runs intrinsically through the film’s soundtrack, as well, the team of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Alva Noto, and Bryce Dessner combining for a chilling, powerful listening experience.

It could even be argued as a black comedy.” The bleakly beautiful, haunting film may slice cold like a blade of white light, but when it hits you, you can pick out the myriad and diverse themes and motifs. In his review of The Revenant, Editor-in-Chief Michael Roffman keenly pointed out the prismatic depth of the year’s fifth best film: “ The Revenant is a Western, it’s a survival tale, it’s a drama, it’s a historical epic, it’s an existential portrait.

Ryuichi sakamoto the revenant