I like my brutal reality to be brutal and realistic. I guess I’m the perfect audience for this kind of thing. It’s a very fine line and here Iñárritu nails the tone perfectly. Believe me, I’ve tried it many times and probably blown it more often than hit the mark. But if I choose to head off into the great unknown on another cinematic adventure, I know which camera I’ll take along next time!Ĭapturing violence on screen and making it feel immediate and shocking, without it becoming over-the-top or outlandish, is no mean feat. It lends a beautiful aesthetic to the movie of which I’m incredibly proud. When we shot Centurion, the only digital camera available to us was the RED and we doubted it could handle the sub-zero conditions and constant hammering of wind and rain. Things have come a long way in the past six years. It’s the perfect showcase for the new ARRI 6.5k 65mm camera. It’s a bold and vivid choice, coupled with the use of natural light, and makes for one of the most beautiful movies I’ve ever seen. Emmanuel Lubezki chose to shoot the movie, with stark wide lenses, creates an almost 3D effect, plunging – or perhaps dragging you kicking and screaming – right into the middle of the action. Violent and painful death awaits at every turn, behind every tree, over every bluff. His wilderness is a brutal, unforgiving place. Every rasping, shredding, horrific detail. We can only take a wild guess at what might have happened to many of these poor souls. Even if it isn’t an exact depiction of what really happened, and I have no way of knowing if it is or isn’t, we do know for a fact that men went out into the wilderness, endured in a way we struggle to grasp, and either returned or, in most cases, didn’t. That this is based, however loosely, on a true story gives it that extra sense of authority. Humans are sometimes capable of such amazing feats of endurance it boggles the mind. Rarely has pain and suffering and the desire to survive been portrayed as well as in The Revenant. So I feel like I’ve fought in similar trenches, and on that basis I can only admire Iñárritu for being so bloody-minded in choosing to tackle this particular beast. You can’t go into this kind of story if you’re the kind of director who wants things comfortable and cozy. I wanted it to be as punishing as possible, and it was. I hungered for blizzards and horizontal rain. Weather cover meant that if the sun came out, we shot something indoors. For Centurion, I deliberately pushed to shoot on location in Scotland, in the depths of winter, and in the harshest conditions possible. There has to be a hint of the movie-masochist in a filmmaker who wants to take on such a beast. I think there must be something slightly demented about the kind of people who want to make a movie like this. I’m sure our cast didn’t feel any warmer plunging into a frozen Scottish river than they did a Canadian river, so I figure it kind of evens out. We worked for six weeks in temperatures dipping down to -20 degrees Celsius as opposed to nine months at -30 degrees Celsius, but we only had the support system of a £7 million movie rather than a $135 million movie. OK, so we were in the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland and not the Canadian Rockies, but it’s still subarctic and, as Bear Grylls would surely attest, you can die there very easily and many have. I have some small basis for comparison, having done something similar back in 2010 on my movie Centurion. A literal wilderness and a figurative one. The pain of pushing yourself physically and creatively into and through an unforgiving wilderness. Not protagonist Hugh Glass’ pain, and not Leonardo DiCaprio’s pain either, although they are both palpable. In the week leading up to the Academy Awards, we look back at Talkhouse Film contributors’ takes on the major awards contenders.
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