14 DAY TRIAL // Leonardo DiCaprio hasn’t had much luck in winning an Oscar, but the odds may still turn in his favor, thanks to the December release “The Revenant,” from director Alejandro Inarritu. The production was notoriously difficult, but DiCaprio promises it will have been worth it: “The Revenant” will be “the most unique film-going experience” ever.
“The Revenant” tells the story of real-life hunter Hugh Glass, who is left for dead by his mates after a vicious bear attack. It was shot in real natural conditions, in real light and in chronological order, and that inevitably turned the production into a genuine tour de force.
DiCaprio says the movie is “epic poetry”
You can see a trailer for “The Revenant” below, just to get an idea of how difficult the production was. Shot in Canada and Argentina in freezing temperatures, it also required the two leads, DiCaprio and Tom Hardy, to work very long hours and do physical feats of the kind they had never done before.
In an interview with Yahoo! Movies, DiCaprio says that this film was the hardest he’s ever done, and it wasn’t just because he had to sleep in animal carcasses, eat bad food and shoot in cold temperatures: it was all that and the desire to outdo himself to help Inarritu get just the film he had envisioned.
Sure, he admits, some people walked off set profoundly upset and there were fights between crews, something that Hardy too acknowledged in a recent interview. But what’s a little strife when you’re working on a piece of art?
“It’s going to be one of the most unique film-going experiences that audiences have seen in modern times,” DiCaprio says. “It’s epic poetry, an existential journey through nature, and this man finding a will to live against all odds. Yet he changes, nature changes him and I think those elements changed him while we were doing the movie.”
Those are very big words to stand by.
There is always room at the top
While Hollywood is obsessing with superhero movies and remakes / reboots / sequels, fewer movies like this one are being made. Even DiCaprio admits that the original film might be a dying breed in Hollywood, but he believes that it will soon make a full transition to the small screen: television is at its most exciting right now.
With all that, he’s not losing faith in the audiences and hopes that they will go and see “The Revenant,” not because he’s in it but because it’s a work of art that will shape cinema for good.
He won’t even consider box office rivalry with Disney’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which comes out one week before “The Revenant,” because he knows there’s always room at the top for more than one film.
