Either Ato Quayson (Opinion, 23 February) dozed through The Revenant (hardly likely, given the booming soundtrack) or he imposes his own simple “postcolonial” prejudices on a fine film, made by a Mexican director (Alejandro González Iñárritu) who – witness his critique of Donald Trump – is in no sense an apologist for “wishful things that evoke an American supremacy of yesteryear”. Nor does The Revenant remotely “justify” settler colonialism; it portrays it as brutal and rapacious. The “English” – most are American – are not “good”; the chief villain, Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy in fine mumbling macho form), is Anglo-American. And to compare the film unfavourably to the so-called “cult classic” The Lone Ranger (!) is nonsense. Perhaps Quayson slept through that one too.
Alan Knight
Emeritus professor of history, St Antony’s College, Oxford
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