Along with STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS and The X-Files revival series, THE REVENANT has long occupied a top spot on my list of the most anticipated entertainment events of the winter. The long and arduous journey that Alejandro Iñárritu undertook to bring THE REVENANT to life has been well documented, with the actors experiencing month after month of bitter cold in remote locations all while using only natural light to shoot the film. It sounds absolutely grueling but Leonardo DiCaprio has told Yahoo Movies that it will "be one of the most unique film-going experiences that audiences have seen in modern times."
Some actors may have balked at the conditions of the shoot, but Leonardo DiCaprio believed in Iñárritu's vision and knew exactly what he was getting into:
The truth is that I knew what I was getting into. This was a film that had been floating around for quite some time, but nobody was crazy enough to really take this on, simply because of the logistics of where we needed to shoot and the amount of work and rehearsal that would have to be done to achieve Alejandro and [cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki] vision. They’re very specific about their shots and what they want to achieve, and that — compounded with the fact that we were in an all-natural environment, succumbing to whatever nature gave us — was something that became more of a profoundly intense chapter of our lives than we ever thought it was going to be. It’s epic poetry, an existential journey through nature, and this man finding a will to live against all odds. Yet he changes, nature changes him and I think those elements changed him while we were doing the movie.
DiCaprio can name thirty or forty sequences which were some of the most difficult things he's ever had to do; "whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly." Leonardo DiCaprio also touched upon one of the many standout sequences in the recently released trailer, in which his character of Hugh Glass is attacked by a bear.
Well, I’m not going to give any specifics on how we did it — you’ll figure it out on your own. But I will tell you it involved cables, it involved me flying around the forest, and it involved a tremendous amount of rehearsal. And it was pretty agonizing to do. [Those scenes] — amongst many other sequences — were some of the more difficult things I’ve ever had to do in my entire career. But the end result is going to be one of the most immersive experiences audiences will ever have with what it would be like to come face-to-face with an animal of that magnitude that is incredibly primal. It is absolutely startling and shocking, and it is the closest thing to documentary filmmaking — but in a completely stylized way that a lot of people never experienced.
Those are some mighty strong words, but based upon the absolutely gorgeous trailers and imagery we've seen, I feel confident that all the hard work the cast and crew put into THE REVENANT will pay off once the film is released on December 25, 2015.