Leonardo DiCaprio and Alejandro G. Iñárritu Interview for The Revenant (2016)

joining me now is the film's director alejandro enroute he won three academy awards in 2015 for the film birdman and the star of five times academy award nominee leonardo dicaprio variety describes his performance as a ferocious 200 percent commitment more about that later i am pleased to have both of them at this table at this time welcome thank you very much thank you thank you for having us here's what this is i love this quote so this is you in the hollywood review with leo i said i would love to see you fragile vulnerable to see the man that can be broken and he was very excited by that true is that how you described well you know glass for you well hugh glass was an interesting story for all of us it's sort of a campfire legend that represents the iconic american frontiersmen and man's uh struggle against nature and i think his ability to also conquer nature as well so it's been told from generation to generation but it's a very interesting time period first off you have this oregon territory which was very much like the amazon and you had the first sort of capitalistic move out west to extract the natural resources and you have the clash of the indigenous populations with french and and english fur trappers and here is this man that's you know mauled by a bear left for dead buried alive and has to summon something within his will to to persevere and move on and revenge is the thing that sort of fuels him from the onset but we knew that we wanted to make a movie where we submerged ourselves in these actual elements and we wanted to see what sort of poetry came about what what sort of questions that arose in us as filming as filmmakers and so that's what we did and that i i i i said this before but alejandro almost had a a tough time explaining to me why exactly he wanted to go on this mecca so to speak but i just saw something in his eyes he wanted to submerge himself in these environments and and see what came out and so it was it was almost like a large portion of our lives together in in in nature asking ourselves these questions here's what you said i decided to embark on what i would characterize as more of a chapter of my life than a film commitment yeah absolutely and i think it was that for for a lot of us absolutely a chapter of your life yeah i mean did you come out of this experience you know with a different sense of of how you and what was important yeah i mean we we looked at this all the actors involved i mean there for nine months in sub-zero temperatures in calgary real locations far off locations we looked at this as a grand sort of artistic experiment we've never been a part of something like this we we rehearsed meticulously all day long with chivo and alejandro to to pull off some uh very crucial and hard to do shots and then we'd have an hour and a half of natural light and it became like live theater at the end of the day this frenetic pace this intensity that we needed to you know um keep up with but but more so than that was for all of us it was just about allowing ourselves to put our trust in in somebody else's unique process and that's what this was for us as actors because a lot of this was thought about beforehand in great detail but we needed to give ourselves over completely to something entirely new and you know it created a great camaraderie between the entire cast and and and crew and director but also the most demanding and toughest experience you've had as an actor well by nature by nature of doing a movie yeah this was the certainly that the toughest film i've ever been a part of this had been around for a while yes i i read the first draft written by marcel smith five years ago and uh and i was really you know intrigued by the story of this man who actually was a you know factual real story about this character that 200 years ago almost was attacked by a bear and then in the full winter he can survive 200 miles to find revenge and i thought what this guy has in mind what happened in this guy's life because anything that is known of hugh glass before and after is pure legend so that there is no actual year no one could have done one no well you know what was writing story in that time these men were alone by themselves in these very very difficult times and uh it was an unknown uncharted territory so but um what i loved was that this fact of being attacked by a bear and then survive is almost so improbable that it requires a willing suspension of disbelief right which is basically the foundation of the cinematic faith as coleridge said of poetry and i said you need to suspend the disbelief to make this [Music] you you need to stop judgment or prejudice to believe that a man can do that and to attempt that in a cinematic experience is what really art is about to make probable improbable and those elements were there silently to then put some ideas or how long cinematically does the scene of the bear attacking how how many women know how many no first of all how many minutes does it last in the film ten minutes ten minutes and how long did it take you to shoot that well it was a lot of research of the bear of the embarrassing you you are you're saying well it you know to it is one of those events that nobody will like to see in the real life but to understand how it happened you have to see it in real time not in a chopped cinematic thing even when people say why not with editing no yes it's almost like the birdman kind of shooting yes yes many many many things that i learned from berman i apply here because i thought that to be in the point of view of hugh glass of leo's character will be the way that people really can understand insight and sound the point of view of the character that they are leaving and i want to make it immersive and if i will have decide to cut this bear attack in a cinematic way fragmented way to standardize it in the way the people is used to then we will lose the nuances and and and and how he survived the because that's what is really incredible and survival is in the details so i want the people to experience the whole thing you know uh but he literally throws you around the bear does like a doll yeah i i remember having the conversation with alejandro because you read in the script okay hugh glass fights the bear i'm like so how am i gonna fight this mayor what am i going to do like what kind of movements mike what would a man do then you realize oh yeah it's not a fight you're basically like a cat with a ball of yarn you're being thrown around i'm the young so i essentially was the art but what was what's groundbreaking i think about that sequence and why i think so many people are talking about it is it's all it almost becomes virtual reality in a lot of ways you feel very voyeuristic like you're watching something you shouldn't be witnessing and that's a testament to alejandro and chivo's masterful work is as artists they have a way of submerging you into this reality and making almost feel the tension the the uncomfort a lot of what is so powerful about that sequence is the moments of silence that they create you know the silence between man and beast and and what's going to happen next and they and and i think that you know as as the history of cinema unfolds people are going to be talking about that sequence for for a long period of time the interesting thing about the performance your performance is that you probably have said less in this movie yeah than most other movies you've done right i mean it is about expression it is about pain it is about all the things that you do with your eyes and your body and well that was what was interesting for me as an actor from the onset is how to push a narrative along without words that's what was attractive i think from the onset but it became about something different when you're there he he set up a landscape for us that was so incredibly authentic the people around us the costumes the actual locations that we were in you do so much preparation beforehand learning about the time period reading fur trappers journals uh you know meeting men that were nostalgic about this period that look at the mountain man as almost a spirituality you do all this research but once you get there and you're put in these conditions it's just about trust and it's about trusting the director you're working with and saying you know how we gonna persevere what are we gonna do day to day and you just kind of rely on instinct as an actor and all that stuff all that preparation all the things you've thought about sort of dissolve away and that's what this experience i think was for the entire cast was uh you know a trust in with within one another that we're going to do something you know completely different cinematically that's exactly what you want isn't it in other words all the preparation is there but but when the battle starts when the action starts you want them relying on instinct yeah the physicality of it as lego said you have to surrender and you have to be very humble with that because one thing is to to kind of have a conception how in bull fighting how to stand in front of the bull and to that once you are in front of that bull like those guys in the in the tribune like with the cigar like ah don't be a coward get close once you are there you have to know that because there's no negotiation not you are really really at the mercy of that and this is a road movie and uh and yes i didn't want this film to get into the standardized or generalized kind of generic kind of thing i was looking to in not only in in form and substance in in predictable way which that's the way i like sometimes not to frame things but sometimes the substance start to get into unpredictable things that we couldn't have thought that we learned sometimes we domain it sometimes those things domain to us and defeat us but that was the battle and that was the film was about so at the end the end product is a x-ray of the process we went through with all the maybe the maybe weakness and strengths but it's a work on process because we never stopped working with nature you know shut this in natural light yes wow so you had to wait for two hours of available light yeah always when the the sun came down it's when we were shooting and the reason there was several reasons but one of the reasons obviously visually you know we want this to be a painting almost like a sonic painting you know i want the people to submerge in a caravaggio kind of thing and the landscape but i think that is when the people will experience in this film those those scenarios we are not allowed to see it anymore because we have in a way polluted planet earth with so many advertising and cables and dams and things that to look to those scenarios in the right time of the day is when god speaks is when really things reveal themselves and that's part of the cinematic experience and that's landscapes is what heals uh hugh glass or kill him or threaten him so to shoot it in the right time was not only aesthetical decision but a production wise decision because in those long takes we will have shot at different times of the day which we will never be allowed because we travel two hours every day to get there we will never finish and it will never matter we had a hard time finding a locale didn't you because you were not there yeah every you know we planned it was more than 100 locations in three states and three different parts of the world but every time you arrive you prepare three four months in advance you rehearse you choreograph you plan everything you you do everything for those things to be there and then suddenly you arrive and they are destroyed by blizzard or there's no snow as you want it also it's all the time again you have to be moving around yeah we struggle you know there's also cold the river had to be cold over the entire they didn't eat that river for you the entire production was cold all the time new york is like a capulco now i guess i hadn't been in the cold in a while i got got to new york yesterday and i was like wow i we did this every day for nine months you have foster medic like my core temperature i had like flashbacks to the movie almost what was the most challenging part of this for you other than the elements oh the challenging part was the endurance it was it was just the endurance i mean the endurance that everyone you know had to have every single day because he's you know he set the bar so high from the onset i mean our opening sequence in this movie i didn't even really understand what what alejandra was doing from the onset but he wanted to put the audience and the mindset of each one of the lead characters in this long 15 minute tracking shot that is quite masterful and almost took three to four weeks of rehearsal because what what they what chiva and he achieve in that in that sequence is something i mean i keep on talking about the movies that they must have drawn upon whether it be i am cuba treasurer the sierra madre sanjiro you know tarkovsky films you know like solaris but they achieve this they have this ability to get incredibly intimate with the characters and then pan off to a landscape that's like an unbelievable david lean shot and then we view like the cinematic snake in and out of the forest and into the mindsets of each one of these characters i didn't really understand what was going on until i saw the final product and then i realized well you know that's why we prepare for these things in such great detail that's why it takes weeks and weeks of rehearsal what was it about him that made you be willing to give yourself over to him and trust him i've been a fan of his work for a long period of time but it's the passion it's the look it was the look in his eyes from the onset of saying that he wanted to go down to the heart go into the heart of darkness so to speak he wanted to have that moment in nature it was almost like he wanted to give himself over to something higher than him it was almost a sort of spiritual voyage that i think he wanted to go on and i knew look there's only so many times in your life you can be on a journey like that and you want to put yourself in the hands of somebody that is going to strive for incredible authenticity and that's what he did i think that there was there's no sequence in this movie that i don't remember alejandro looking at every single detail of what was in that frame and that's what you want when you're working with a director is to have them think of all of these things so you can concentrate on your job you know and he created this incredibly authentic atmosphere for us each and every day because some people have raised the idea that it's how could an actor in those circumstances um concentrate on his acting yeah i mean because of the conditions the conditions it forced you to concentrate it forces you to concentrate on your acting yeah and be in the moment you know granted you have chivo the cinematographer sometimes coming with the lens like this in your face and you have to sort of you know edit that out but it it forces you into almost this primal state of being when when you're out there for that long of a period of time it just becomes about the basics yeah it's really strange all the esoteric existential things that you're thinking about it becomes about just moving forward yeah yeah surviving leaders forgotten one detail the first time that i met him to offer the role i just put the gun between us and then i said to him in the mexican style i said you accept this room he did it but no it's true what what what you were asking is true it's all the rehearsal charlie all the rehearsals once we were there we knew that we have just one take and the conditions were so thin and i saw leo as you said with no words with every body part and every single little nuance in his eyes no words it's a show-and-tell film no words this is a bit like you know the hangman's news concentrates focuses on the con you know yeah makes you concentrate yeah you have to be aware you have to be present and i saw leo doing things with nuances and with rehearsals movements millimetrically there but then at the same time reacting to birds that sings or moves or things that were happening there and i think it's because honestly the awareness that that technique gives you is the awareness that you will be making a really cool in front of millions of people because it's just this is what actors feels in the opening broadway show that they are exposed alive for the first time and only and that's it it was interesting for us as actors too i think a lot of us had to adjust to the process of finding our performance within very specific shot structures from the onset but it became something entirely different became a completely unique process for all of us because it was like live theater every single day and that tension of having to achieve that hour and a half every single day is infused into the actual movie you feel that tension i mean so it was it was like yeah i mean i mean we were high octane every single day that we were making this movie because if not we'd have to show up the next day and keep being in these far-off locations that were hours and hours and hours away from you know next time that you're in a green screen you will be suffering you will be asking for your snow to be there please freeze the sadness uh just a note about this not a photographer uh someone you like and work with and also work with you on birdman she will yeah i don't know i don't like him but he's very good now is a brother and he's a true artist he's is really one of those guys that not only is ahead of his time technology technically he's in the craft he's just a master of light but he is just a partner and partnering crime and a visionary and sensitive artist like no nobody else and and we share this kind of excitement of this period that you know you renovate or die that's my theory as an artist and and always he's like to be renovating and trying things even knowing that we can fail horribly but success is to fail and then try again and we are trying all the time knowing laughing that we can fail but even mistakes that we found in the way we love it because they said well maybe there's something nice about some there's no lotus without math you know there's no like beauty without without there's no light without darkness when we found those kind of territories we love it and we share that enthusiastic thing you know to try those things in the end what is it about a hue glass this true story made into a book that enabled him to persevere what is that x factor it's a tough thing to answer but i you know certainly seeing this movie and seeing these characters up on screen you just you're amazed at the perseverance of life the adaptability of life on earth you know i don't know this movie took on a whole bunch of other meanings for me as we were making it i think things that i couldn't have even foreseen from the onset so many of the conversations we had about you know this time period the first surge out west this capitalistic surge to extract the resources and from the lands kill these animals and send them off to europe and here you have these native american populations their culture is decimated in the process it became it was an environmental undertone to all of it there for me too i think it was all it's all hugh glass's story is about man surviving the savagery of nature being able to conquer nature or adapt to it and the will to live but took on all these other meanings and then especially going to you know places like the canadian tar sands and you know some of the environmental work that i did seeing how we're systematically doing this destroying these these places indigenous cultures forest lands our planet on an unprecedented scale in human history and we think we've learned so much from the past we think we've learned so much from the mistakes of people in history but here we are at this day and age doing things on a grander scale than ever before not to mention the fact that we were shooting a film where we felt the with the onset of climate change hit 2015 being one of the hottest years in recorded history we're seeing firsthand so many climactic changes that we had to change locations to the southern tip of argentina to just a fine snow and here we are today seeing unprecedented weather events all over the world so this movie kind of i was simultaneously doing a movie a documentary about climate change i've been interviewing you know dozens and dozens of scientists and thinkers and politicians all over the world and i was doing a film about climate change while i was doing this movie and to see it firsthand like this was was it's going to be an unforgettable moment in our life in my life because this is the turning point yeah there's a turning point this is you speaking at the climate change conference in paris in december good segway roll tape and a year which has been the hottest and recorded history it is hard to understand how some still refuse to accept the reality of climate change every year that we allow their refusal to hold the world back from making progress is another year gone precious days weeks months and years wasted on inaction but today is different across the globe people of all communities are demanding change marching and raising their voices to say enough is enough we must act and we must all act now our world leaders have come to paris constricted by politics the individual needs of their constituencies but we need to leave here liberated by their humanity and emboldened by their sense of stewardship to our planet they have a choice be timid and stop at an agreement that merely allows them to save face or they can lead they can return to their own towns and cities with a real plan to save the planet and it is these cities that the change must start um you suggested in and you have in that speech talk that we can meet the energy demands with clean renewable energy by 2050. yeah but if we start now but the united states needs to lead the way did they in paris well look i mean this is this these agreements are for all future emissions okay we're talking about a scale of carbon that's been emitted in the atmosphere that's again unprecedented in human history and the climate is reacting accordingly there's been carbon emissions and there's been temperatures throughout recorded history and now we're here okay so it's been this grand puzzle that's been incredibly difficult to figure out but one thing is crystal clear and that is that the united states plays one of the most major roles in the entire world and had they not come to the table had the world community not come to the table at this conference the environmental movement the climate movement would be dead there needed to be some sort of progress because each one of these climb climate summits have failed miserably and for the first time the world community is taking it seriously the big question is are we too late that's been the pondering question for for everyone i know we should all remain optimistic and i want to remain optimistic but you were worried that we are too late that somehow we've done so much damage we can't and somebody else the answer to that is in somebody else's hands but we do know that the scientific community has been screaming out loud for for decades and other interests have stifled their voice and and manipulated this conversation and it's a real shame but i'm one thing i'm proud of that for the first time we've we've seen the world community take this issue seriously and if they hadn't there would be absolutely no hope we can't wait another four years for people to start to listen to 99 of the scientific community i mean it's it's an absurdity and and um it's not about the individual anymore it's about we it's about we as a species as a world community finally coming together to make some sort of progress forward the ques whether we're too late or not remains to be seen but you know i'm just very happy as an environmentalist to see something happen in the right way you know something something that i i was laughing when i was reading the news in this climate thing that the the politicians were discussing about negotiating with nature right like well two degrees no two degrees and a half well in 235 will be two degrees as if they can control the planet earth system and we saw we experienced the difference between one degree another and it's the difference between eyes and water and when that degree fails at sea level yeah no but that we were supposed to be shooting in in one location that suddenly shooting the revenant the difference between one degree another is eyes of water and when the eyes become water they destroy the whole thing and i saw that so and when they say well two degrees is acceptable i said really it's acceptable two degrees take take a look experience one degree of change and you will then talk about that if you negotiate two degrees or not so you know what i'm saying is the the notion of the climate change is one but to experience it and the people as leo or obama or all the people that scientists that are traveling to these places to experience that is a very different thing than reading in the news or just be having statistics as these politicians personal portfolio are you engaged in disinvestment now too aren't you yes yes been recommending yeah absolutely it's very it's very important you know like i said simultaneously i was doing a documentary about climate change and i hope to have it released released next year but i mean look we could talk about this till we're blue in the face it is the most existential human crisis that the world has ever known in my opinion i think that is it is it is the biggest problem that mankind has ever had to face we're not talking about something that is going to change in a decade or not and as many have said a threat to our national security yeah and it's going to change it's something that will quite possibly change this planet for tens of thousands if not millions of years and you know we're all at this point hoping for some sort of generation will say why didn't you do more absolutely so people should go to the revenant and read naomi clients change everything and then that's it the interesting thing you've done a lot of documentaries you've done i mean the last time you were here we talked about a documentary i forgot the subject what was it i have a i like varunga i think it was wrong yeah we talked about i have another one called cowspiracy both i'm just kind of focusing on environmental documentaries at this point that's it uh thank you for coming thank you to have you always great talking to you thank you so much thank you my friend thanks great to see you again thank you very much for joining us the film opens this weekend on friday yes much success thank you very much always good thank you

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Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020