The Revenant: It's definitely gruelling, but is it worth 12 Oscar nominations?

Like Doctor Zhivago it is set against a backdrop of snow and ice. And like Ryan’s Daughter it is a story of love.

But also revenge, though the filmmakers are quick to argue that this goes far further than just a simple tale of retribution.

For 41-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio it was the movie that tested him to the limit. A true story told with a relish for uncomfortable accuracy by Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, it boasts scene after scene of violence, hardship and a sheer bloody-minded will to survive. And at the heart of it is DiCaprio. Last week he took home the Golden Globe for best actor. There is already a BAFTA nomination in the bag. Surely an Oscar nod will follow.

There are those within the industry who have already decided that DiCaprio will win. He has four other acting nominations to his credit but has yet to win the big one. The Revenant could be it.

And yet for much of the film’s 156-minute running time DiCaprio has little to say. That’s partly to do with the punishment meted out upon his character, Hugh Glass, a fur trapper in 1820s frontier America who is slashed to ribbons by a rampaging bear. Moreover, it’s a true story.

Waking in a half-filled grave, finding his son murdered and with his own life hanging by a thread, Glass stumbles off into the wilderness. He’s 200 miles from safety, cannot speak and freezing cold. Glamorous it ain’t…

“More than anything I wanted to try a film that didn’t rely on a lot of dialogue,” says DiCaprio. “This character is predominantly silent throughout the entire course of the movie. It was challenging but it was an adventure. What Alejandro did for us is that he is so authentic in terms of the worlds that he creates – the indigenous Americans, the fur trappers – [that] everything that I saw and reacted to was like real life.”

The idea behind the movie – it is based on the novel by Michael Punke, a dramatised version of the adventures of Glass – was, says DiCaprio, “to go on a saga together, like an epic journey”. He adds: “I knew that this movie was going to be incredibly difficult logistically. We had locations that we had to get to that were untouched by humanity. We were there for nine months in sub-zero temperatures.

“It was an endurance test for all of us but there was something in Alejandro’s eyes when he first talked to me about it. He wanted to submerge himself in the elements and see what nature gave us and put it on the screen in a very poetic way. And I think he did.”

DiCaprio also talks with irony about global warming – he is a campaigner for the environment – and how a search for snow took him, Iñárritu and the crew to the southern tip of Argentina to find the perfect location.

“Here we are, a bunch of artists saying, ‘Let’s go into nature and see what it tells us!’ Well, nature was telling us that the world is changing unlike ever before. 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history. These are unprecedented weather conditions happening all over the world and it hit us right smack in the face. We had to shut down production multiple times [due to] extreme weather patterns, [with] the locals telling us that they had never seen this in the history of their province.”

Glass was one of America’s mountain men of legend – a hardy individual who helped chart the United States. History tells us that he was indeed attacked by a bear and abandoned by his treacherous fellow trappers, played in the movie by Tom Hardy and Will Poulter. History also reveals that in confronting the men he had tracked for so long – one was Jim Bridger, who would later go on to have incredible adventures of his own – he did not kill them.

What’s more Glass is said not to have had a son – the primary cause of his long walk for vengeance in The Revenant. But putting that aside, Iñárritu opted for the bigger picture. “It was before the West existed, before the oil rush, the gold rush… the only men who had crossed the country were Lewis and Clark,” says the 52-year-old, an Oscar winner for Birdman.

“It was a melting pot [of people] with no law. Everybody was trying to find their way, surviving in these conditions in unknown territory. The biggest income in the United States was from beaver pelts. So men came to look for those animals, and almost made them extinct. These people were trying to survive and they were threatened by animal attacks, by other cultures attacking [them], by diseases. Most of these guys came from very poor families, very illiterate. Conditions for a worker in those times were really tough.

“So all of those things in a way were fascinating to base a film on [as well as] the historical fact of Hugh Glass who was attacked by a bear. That was the spin. But the context was very rich.”

Thus the film is packed with moments that connect together to depict Glass’s journey from half-dead bear fodder to a father demanding payback for his murdered child.

Of the bear attack – it was achieved with cables and special effects – DiCaprio says this: “That sequence was three weeks of rehearsal in the wilderness. Alejandro never lets me talk exactly about how he pulled it off but the end result is something that I think breaks cinema boundaries. He allows you to almost have a virtual reality-type experience with this bear attack. I don’t know how he did what he did but he pulled off a miracle. It’s chilling.”

The Revenant (18) is out on general release today.