COLD, HARD TRUTH
“The Revenant’s” Leonardo DiCaprio and his fellow cast and director talk about that bear mauling and more.
BY MARK OLSEN Much has been made of the extreme conditions under which Alejandro G. Iñárritu and his cast and crew worked to film “The Revenant,” the story of frontier scout Hugh Glass, who in 1823 is left for dead by his party after he is horribly mauled by a bear. It turns out it was all true. The shoot — through snow, icy water and extreme physical exertion — really was difficult, say the actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Domhnall Gleeson and Forrest Goodluck, who spoke along with their director at a recent Envelope Screening Series Q&A hosted by Times film writer Mark Olsen. Here are excerpts from the conversation.
What was it about this story that made you want to shoot it with the real locations and the natural light?
Alejandro G. Iñárritu: The fact that it really happened to Hugh Glass in 1823 is very impressive. I think it’s a very simple, straight, powerful anecdote to start with and a way to explore many things in a period of time of the United States that hasn’t been explored in cinema in a long time. It was a great opportunity to understand who this guy was, what was the context of that, what made him alive, what can be the driving force of revenge to
get you there.
And Leonardo, what was it about the story that spoke to you?
Leonardo DiCaprio: It was more so being able to work with Alejandro in a film like this. This screenplay I think had been floating around for a while and logistically was very hard to pull off from a cinematic perspective. But there was something in Alejandro’s eyes, in the way he articulated this yearning for wanting to immerse himself in nature. It was more than just doing a movie. He wanted to, by sub-