The Revenant: Leonardo DiCaprio and Alejandro González Iñárritu Break Down the Bear Attack Scene

I'm not sure how much you want me to reveal about the technical aspects of what went into it, but it's been 10 years, so maybe we'll talk about it, Alejandro. I read a book that was very impressive and very useful for me that was basically based on more than 100 people that have survived bear attacks. All of these guys, the accountants, were very important because they described most of the time how they were basically you crossed with the cops. And once you are in the middle between the mother and the cops, there's no way you survive. And what is the sound, how they attack, how many times it happened between you to hear something and then the attack, what the bear do. All this kind of strategy that the bear don't go and just bite you. No, I think they just make you unconscious and then they little by little start getting you all the skin. And it's a terrifying kind of death. There was a series of pulley systems. We were amongst giant redwoods and I had, I don't know, 15 different cables tied up to me to draw me in different directions. We rehearsed for months with a man that was the size of a football player that I remember had a giant football helmet and a blue CGI bear head on top of him that learned how to be a bear for months, learned bear movements. Leo have to, have to go through a very difficult process in a gym that we ran with Arnes and choreographed exactly every, every movement of the bear with Leo. It's a choreographed, very brutal dance. It was a very meticulous couple of, I would say many days really getting that movements that felt real and how we can cover the best way from which point of view. Every film that I saw about bear attacks was always cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And I think, I mean, it always looks, and I want to say what, how it will look as Werner Herzog documentary that the camera was done there and then you see that in real time. That was my experiment. How a bear attack will be in real time, how I can say that this is the most realistic way to see it. And that's what we attempt. There was a time where I think he wanted this all to be in one shot. The whole movie. And obviously when you have two characters that are in far distances from each other, there's a hard, it's very difficult to connect them. But certainly for specific sequences, there's, there was really no cuts. So it was again, one of those adrenaline filled moments of having to get each one of these movements right. And I remember also Alejandro talking about working with the CGI and constantly trying to make it look less pretty, less clean, make the dirt, the bear dirtier, grittier. And he kept working and working. And then the final product, you know, just for me as an audience member, getting to see it, it is, it feels incredibly ruthless and realistic. And so much thought was put into all of it. The landscape was part of the story, you know, and obviously that the grizzly attack was very important to find the right location. After, obviously, you know, with a lot, there was a lot of research too. There was not only like, like creative license, but always it was based for me, I think for the dramatic tension. And kind of some research that really makes sense to the survival story of this character. When we shot this film, we were to shoot it in 65 millimeters in film, but then we realized that we will not have the exposure to do that. And the weight of the camera and all the challenges we have was impossible, we will be losing. So we decided to shoot it at that time, my first time that I shot with a digital camera at that range. It was the first 65 millimeters camera available with ARRI cameras. It was the first time that a film was shot like that. And I think the image always was very beautiful and powerful, but I have to say that checking the result in the IMAX, the sound of it. I was very, very impressed about the work of Martin Hernandez and all the team that they did this incredible work to assess all those sounds. Randy Thorne, by the way, was the guy who found the way to get right the sound of the bear. It should sound not like overdone, if you overdone that, then you kill that. So it was a massive effort of months to design that in audio. So the audio, I think the people that watch the film in the IMAX will be very impressed with the sonic experience. Beyond the visual, which it has hold incredibly. Chivo called me actually two days ago and said, wow, the audio is the best of the movie. He said, this is not the image, the audio is a trip. And another factor that I want to mention here is our beloved, incredible musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who did the score with Carsten Nicolás, with Alva Noto and Bryce Dessner. That score of Ryuichi is just insanely beautiful. And so anyway, it was a long way. It was almost a year working the sound design of the movie. It was as complex as the thing, but we are very proud of the sound. It's a film that barely has words. The character of Ryu is silent, basically. And literally the action and the movement of camera and Ryu's, in a way, performance and body has to convey, transmit, communicate and make clear all what he was feeling, seeing, wanting, challenged by. And it was literally in a sculpture, in a sculptural kind of thing that Ryu has been with no words to be basically transmitting everything what the movie was about. So the camera move and the light and that, it was part of the whole body of language that Ryu was basically like a solo. Just orchestrating the whole thing to make sure that we were capturing what a man can be surrounded by nature and being threatened every second. So that was kind of the idea. Well, for me as an actor, it was a completely, totally unique experience. I mean, I think Alejandro and Chivo submerged themselves in the elements with this entire crew. But as an actor and for all of us, all day was discovery. This film is incredibly unique. You know, we shot an hour and a half, hour tops and magic hour every single day. So it was almost like a theater production for us as actors. We would rehearse the scene over and over again to the point where we were able to experiment, take chances. But a lot of that improvisation and stuff needed to be done during the daytime. Because once that magic hour hit, you know, oftentimes we wouldn't get it, but it needed to operate like a Swiss watch. I mean, especially with Alejandro and Chivo's movements with the camera, this fluidity of this sort of snake-like constant movement. We needed to be exactly at specific points at specific times. So all the experimentation as an actor I felt kind of happened during the daytime, which was totally unique, you know. And of course there were spontaneous moments on the day that happened, those sort of happy accidents. But it felt like a traveling theater production. And oftentimes we would just not accomplish what we had to accomplish. And we'd have to come back and try it again the next day. A Kodiak bear or polar bear, they're just the most powerful predators on Earth. You absolutely have no chance. Their skin is massively thick, can't be penetrated. And the thing weighs, you know, a good 800 pounds heavier than you. You have absolutely no chance against an animal like that. It is the apex predator on Earth. When we were doing scouting, basically we always were in very, very real dangerous territories of grizzlies, especially in Vancouver. And we always have with us one guy with a rifle in case, right? And the guys who were very used to that territory, always the recommendation for people that wants to hear that, the way to avoid it is to walk as tall as you can, raise your hands. Well, there we go.