Mild spoilers ahead: proceed with caution if you haven’t seen the movie and you’ve been living under a rock (or a bear) over the last few weeks …
Most of us know by now that Leonardo DiCaprio does a very good job of being one (he’s already won a Golden Globe and might well take home an Oscar for it), but how many people still aren’t quite sure — or haven’t yet got around to Googling it — what exactly revenant means? Even Microsoft Word puts a squiggly red line under it, not quite recognizing the noun as part of our standard English usage. Let’s do a quick pop quiz: do you think it means a) someone waking up from a dream? b) someone coming back after a long absence? c) someone returning from the dead?, or d) someone seeking revenge?
You might be forgiven for thinking it’s any or all of the above, given everything that Leo has to contend with in the grim new Alejandro Iñárritu movie that depicts his uncomfortable journey: he sort of does all those things in the course of the 2 1/2-hour epic — with gritted teeth and some seriously heavy breathing that made my lungs feel lucky to be mine and not his. Could it be definition d? The first five letters of revenant are shared with the name of that thing that’s best served cold, and Leo’s pretty set on that action (and pretty cold too) by the end of his adventure. Or maybe it’s definition a: the first four letters — reve — are French for a dream, and Leo certainly wakes up from lots of those while he’s taking the occasional kip between injuries. B and c might both work too, but I’ll let the dictionaries provide the ultimate spoiler …
Merriam-Webster defines the word revenant as “one that returns after death or a long absence.” Dating from the early 19th century, it comes from the French verb revenir (to return), using its present participle as a noun meaning literally ‘coming back’. (It also became an adjective, with the same meaning, in the early 20th century.) The Oxford English Dictionary is a little more nuanced with its definition, offering “a person who has returned, especially supposedly from the dead; a ghost”. Supposedly is the operative word here, lending a further sense of ambiguity to an already slightly mystical concept: does revenant mean someone returning from the dead literally or figuratively? Or simply after a long time away? Whatever definition you choose to ascribe to it, depending on your beliefs and inclinations, it seems an especially good choice for the title of the movie in question. See it, and the true meaning of revenant might just reveal itself to you.
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