Survival expert agrees eating raw bison liver, like what Leonardo DiCaprio did in ‘The Revenant,’ is healthy
How accurate are the survival strategies in “The Revenant?”
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s Best Actor award in the 88th Oscars on Monday renewed public interest on the movie “The Revenant” which was just shown in December 2015. Beyond the actor’s award-winning performance, film critics are asking how correct are the survival strategies shown in the movie.
On top of their list is eating raw bison liver which DiCaprio really had a taste for authenticity’s sake even if the actor is a vegan. Ray Mears, a survival and bush craft expert, told The Telegraph in January that raw bison liver “is fine to eat” in a survival situation because it has complete amino acids that would prevent starvation.
Mears adds that it is good to eat the liver raw because of the blood in the organ which contains carbohydrates, needed in a freezing temperature situation of fur trapper Hugh Glass, the character played by DiCaprio. “It acts as a wick that enables you to burn the wax, which is the fat in your body,” enabling the body to use its resources, Mears explains.
But Mears questions Glass’s sleeping inside the corpse of a dead horse. Besides the scene not being in the original 2002 book by author Michael Punke, the expert points out that it is possible since people have done it before. But, the catch is, “he’d freeze to death after one night.”
A third detail that was cinematically big was the bear (a computer-generated creature) throwing DiCaprio like a rag – which a reviewer even wrote as the bear raping the actor. Mears cites an interview with a woman who was attacked by a real bear. After the woman stared the grizzly in the eye, it bit her on the face, breast and hip. The bear did not need to throw her around because it is used to fighting other bears which has thick skins.
Another discrepancy between the movie and the book is Glass sought revenge for the death of his son by killing John Fitzgerald, the character played by Tom Hardy. People points out that Glass, in real life, never had a son or a native American wife. However, what is true is that Fitzgerald left Glass for dead after the bear attack.
The book was based on the account of Daniel Potts, a co-worker of Glass at the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. Potts wrote to friends a letter in 1824 about the bear attack, and the letter formed the backbone for the book by Punke.
One other unrealistic detail of “The Revenant” is that it did not show a single scene of Glass answering the call of nature, notes The Telegraph. In pointing out the absence of such detail, the Brit daily says “It’s not we’re unhealthily obsessed with the DiCaprio defecation process. But from what we’ve read, attending to basic bodily functions in such a harsh environment would be pretty tough – and therefore worth of inclusion in Alejandro Inarritu’s survival epic.”
Notwithstanding these weaknesses, DiCaprio’s acting was compelling enough to deserve him the Best Actor trophy. But it also possibly explains why the movie failed to bag the Best Movie award.
