The Revenant- Behind The Scenes

So most of us have all heard about the spectacular movie The Revenant starring Leonardo DiCaprio and director Alejandro Inarritu. If you haven't it's based on the life of real of Hugh Glass an American Explorer of the late 18th century. The Revenant has a very real and violent appearance to it and have heard about the challenges there were to film such a complicated film. However, what are the challenges? What did the actors go through in order to achieve such great film?

Based on countless interviews from both the actors and the director, they named the weather to be the most challenging. Director Alejandro Inarritu said that it was hard to film because he faced changing weather patterns every day. He filmed the majority of the film in Alberta, Canada but by the end of the film the snow wasn't there so they had to relocate all the way to the southern tip of Argentina. Because of the harsh weather conditions, he only had one hour and half to film each day! The majority of his day, however, was spent walking with the cast & crew from one location to the other. Some of the crew members actually quit halfway of the shooting. Director Inarritu decided to film the movie in sequence of events because he wanted the actors to follow through with the emotions they were feeling the day before.

For the actors, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, Domhall Gleeson, and more had to go through very harsh temperatures to film the movie. For instance, the temperature was sub zero the majority of the time for the whole 9 months it took to record the movie. Leonardo DiCaprio and Will Poulter had to actually go into these freezing waters several times in order to get the perfect shot. The actors rehearsed for 4 months prior to the first shooting of the movie. However, they rehearsed one scene all day long until that hour and half window to shoot as much as they could, i.e. taking advantage of the natural lighting. Both DiCaprio and Hardy were taught the Arikara Indigenous Language  They had all the actors meet with several advisers in order to understand the people that actually lived in that time period, especially Hugh Glass, in order to have the right mindset and achieve the right approach to each character. Leonardo DiCaprio actually had to eat raw fish and raw bison liver in order to portray his character more realistically. He took six months to grow his beard like Hugh Glass as much as possible. DiCaprio had to rehearse 3 weeks to do that iconic bear scene where his back and throat gets ripped right open.

Credit: Twentieth Century Fox