Leonardo DiCaprio discusses working with Alejandro Inarritu on The Revenant

Some directors prefer to stick to the relative safety and controllable conditions of the studio, while others say "f**k it lets head out to the middle of nowhere and leave our lights behind." Alejandro Iñárritu, director of THE REVENANT, definitely falls into the latter category. Iñárritu made the choice to film THE REVENANT in remote Canadian locations using only natural light; a daunting challenge to be sure, but so far everything we've seen leads us to believe that it's paid off in spades.

The final scenes of THE REVENANT are being shot in Argentina and Entertainment Weekly managed to speak with Leonardo DiCaprio who discussed what it's been like working with Alejandro Iñárritu:

Alejandro is a bold and fearless director. He’s a creative force who fights for what he wants to see up on screen and works tirelessly until it’s a part of his vision. For The Revenant, he really wanted to create an almost subversive virtual reality, an existential journey of Hugh Glass that’s almost documentary-like in its approach. He depends on extensive rehearsals and works incredibly close with Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman, Gravity) his cinematographer.

As the hours of optimal natural light were rather limited, Alejandro Iñárritu put the actors and crew through constant rehearsals so that when the moment came, everything would go off without a hitch.

I understood that in order for Alejandro to pull off some of these complicated sequences, everything needed to be very precise. The whole cast and crew rehearsed meticulously for months beforehand to meet his vision and make it all possible. Nearly everyday we reworked the choreography of the scene and shot it at a specific time of day when the natural light was at its best.

DiCaprio mentions that the entire cast and crew worked in exceptionally tough conditions for long periods of time, but that "the result will be an incredibly powerful and memorable film, and that’s ultimately what we do this for, a great piece of art." We're still a ways off from THE REVENANT's release on December 25, 2015, but everything seems to indicate that Iñárritu and company have managed to pull off something astounding, I can't wait.