In a 12.11 Revenant review, New York‘s David Edelstein has written that I was “justly ridiculed” for writing that Alejandro G. Inarritu‘s film was too “unflinchingly brutal” for women. I didn’t actually write that. Having witnessed a female dp friend go into a fetal-tuck position in her seat and hearing from a journalist friend that his wife “wouldn’t last five minutes with this thing,” I half-assedly tweeted “forget women seeing this.” Three hours later I allowed that if “I had given the matter 15 or 20 seconds worth of thought I would have rephrased and qualified in some way. I’m not stupid, and I know that generalizations always get you into trouble.” What I wrote, in fact, was that The Revenant is “an unflinchingly brutal, you-are-there, cold-wind, raw-element immersion like something you’ve never seen…rapturous, fierce, delirious…submerged in ice, arctic air, brutality…an ordeal of blood, agony, survival, snow, ice water, wounds and steaming horse guts.”
