American frontiersman, fur trapper and trader Hugh Glass is remembered for the legend of his survival after being mauled by a grizzly bear. There’s no written account from Glass himself and the story is likely to have been wildly embellished over the years, so there’s quite a bit of leeway for the script.
Realism was the keyword so the film was shot chronologically and with a minimum of digital effects.
The decision by director Alejandro G Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki to shoot only with natural light gave only a few shooting hours were each day, resulting in a schedule of 80 days spread over nine gruelling months in punishingly cold and remote locations.
The story is set in 1823 'Montana' and 'South Dakota', but most of the film was in fact shot in Canada, in Kananaskis Country and the spectacular scenery of Bow Valley in the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary, Alberta. The area also previously in for ‘Wyoming’ in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain.
Sets for the film by Production Designer Jack Fisk include the ruined church, the Pawnee village, a 40-foot mountain of buffalo skulls and the frontier fort, which was built from lumber discarded by the Canadian Park service.
The opening bloody ambush on fur-traders by the Arikara Native Americans was shot in Stoney First Nations Reserve, a real Native American reserve near Morley, about 20 miles west of Calgary.
It’s after surviving this initial attack, as the trappers head for the safety of their fort, that Glass is mauled almost to death by a bear in a scene of breathtaking ferocity. Iñárritu is understandably secretive about how this bravura sequence was filmed. Leonardo DiCaprio was apparently yanked around on a harness, smashing into prop rubber trees, while the grizzly was largely added by motion-capture – one of the few concessions to full-on CGI.
The scene was filmed not in Alberta but in British Columbia, in Derringer Forest, a small area on the east side of Squamish River, beneath Mount Cayley about 30 miles northwest of Squamish itself.
Kruti dev 010. About a mile to the south, the severely Glass is carried on a makeshift stretcher across the sandbar at Shovelnose Creek.
With Glass’s chances of surviving his wounds minimal and his presence slowing the party’s progress, Captain Henry (Domhnall Gleeson) leaves Glass in the tender care of John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) and young Bridger (Will Poulter) until they can return with help.
The ruthless Fitzgerald soon kills Glass’s son and leaves the incapacitated man behind to make his own way back to the fort.
The mountain wilderness through which Fitzgerald travels was filmed near Fortress Mountain Resort, a ski resort about 70 miles west of Calgary near the Kananaskis Trail in Kananaskis Country. Snowy scenes for Inception and The Bourne Legacy were filmed in the same area.
It’s in the Badlands of Drumheller, about 60 miles northeast of Calgary, that Fitzgerald witnesses a meteor falling to earth. It's hard to miss the area’s signature rock faces. The area is known for its sheer rock faces and its ‘hoodoos’, tall rock formations rising up from the desert landscape, as well as a wealth of fossils which have earned it the name Dinosaur Capital of the World.
Driven by the need for revenge, Glass summons astonishing willpower and manages against all odds to survive, beginning his own slow and painful journey to safety.
In a scene filmed in the USA, Glass escapes from a party of pursuing Arikara using the rapids of Kootenai Falls, just downstream from Libby, Montana, one of the largest free-flowing waterfalls in the Northwest with a 90 feet drop. Movie buffs might recognise this stretch of water from Curtis Hanson’s 1994 The River Wild, with Meryl Streep.
The destination for all is ‘Fort Kiowa’, a set built at Dead Man’s Flats, further west toward Canmore, overlooked by the rugged peak of Castle Rock.
As production dragged on, the arrival of warm Chinook winds in southern Alberta resulted in a sudden melting of the snow. At first, snow had to be trucked in as a temporary solution, but the production was finally forced to relocate.
And what a relocation. The final scenes were filmed over four days on Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago split between Argentina and Chile off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland, across the Strait of Magellan.
The confrontation between Glass and Fitzgerald, was filmed on the Olivia River, in the mountains just northeast of Ushuaia, a resort town (though don’t imagine palm trees and sunny beaches) on the southern coast of the main island, Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, the part belonging to Argentina.
The local airport, Malvinas Argentinas International Airport, is the world's southernmost international airport, often used as a cruise-ship gateway to the Antarctic.
The 1971 film, Man in the Wilderness (1971), starring Richard Harris as ‘Zachary Bass’ and John Huston as Captain Henry, is based on the same story.
Leonardo DiCaprio battles the elements – and a ferocious bear – in this fierce, elemental western from 'Birdman' director Alejandro González Iñárritu
After the playful, urban and contemporary humour of the Oscar-winning ‘Birdman’, this bleak-faced 1820s-set frontier western sees Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu return to the darker worldview of his earlier films like ‘Babel’ and ‘21 Grams’.
Based on a 2002 Michael Punke novel about real-life folk hero Hugh Glass, ‘The Revenant’ stars Leonardo DiCaprio (gruff, committed, unreadable) as a fur trapper and frontiersman left for dead by his colleagues in a wintry American landscape after he is viciously shredded by a grizzly bear. Glass survives, and he hauls his damaged body through snow, across rivers, up rocks and over plains, driven by revenge. In his sights is John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy, savage with a dash of black humour), the man responsible for abandoning him to die and for forcing him to watch as his young son (of mixed-race parentage) is murdered in front of his eyes.
So, no, it’s not a happy tale. But what survives from ‘Birdman’ is a compelling, forward-moving, simple approach to storytelling that grips us through stretches of silence and misery. The film's relentlessness itself becomes magnetic. There are times when 'The Revenant' feels like one long and unforgiving act of sadism, mostly directed at its lead character, but occasionally at us (a warning: the film is long, the dialogue is minimal and the violence is sharp). There are moments, too, that feel like parodies of awards-hungry acting, such as when we see DiCaprio chomping on raw animal organs or climbing into the steaming carcass of a dead horse.
But what makes this more than just a punishing, fearful, expertly crafted thriller focused on one man’s endurance is heavily down to Emmanuel Lubezki’s attractive, thoughtful photography. Lubezki’s work will be familiar to viewers of Terrence Malick’s recent films (including ‘The Tree of Life’) for the timeless sense of soulfulness that he can lend to a landscape. Here, that same visual style, coupled with the film’s concern for the Native American experience and its compassion for the father-child bond, makes ‘The Revenant’ not just gruelling, but often gorgeous and quietly spiritual.
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Saturday, February 27, 2016, 10:49 AM - With breathtaking visuals and a classic yet brutal narrative pitting man against nature, the Hollywood film The Revenant has swept up audiences and critics since its theatrical release.
The film goes into the Academy Awards with 12 nominations, including Best Picture, Actor in a Lead Role, Directing and Cinematography.
But earning these acknowledgements proved no easy feat.
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Cast and crew endured an 11-month shoot hampered by poor weather conditions and arduous travel to remote locations in western Canada. The film's director Alejandro González Iñárritu was adamant that scenes be shot outdoors on location, as opposed to relying on computer generated imagery and green screen technology.
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This objective led to filming locations in Alberta and British Columbia, where majestic landscapes stood in for the American midwest of the 19th century.
Charging full steam ahead into the awards race, the film follows one man's fight for survival following the ultimate betrayal and a gruesome attack, all against the backdrop of an unforgiving yet hauntingly beautiful North American frontier.
Here's a look at a few scene-stealing Canadian backdrops from the Oscar-nominated film.
The majority of scenes shot in Canada were filmed in this scenic region of Alberta. Located west of Calgary and comprised of several parks and reserves in the Canadian Rockies, Kananaskis is a sought-after destination for adventurers and outdoor enthusiasts.
It was here that Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezk captured the untouched beauty of mountain ranges under blankets of fresh snow, amid frigid winter temperatures -- a desolate and unforgiving background for a group of wearied frontiersmen.
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Bow Valley Provincial Park, including the wide Bow River that flows through it, are featured prominently in the film. In addition to the physical demands placed on actors who waded through freezing waters, these scenes were painstakingly rehearsed in the elements.
A trademark of Iñárritu is using only natural light when filming, so time spent shooting was comparatively short to the overall amount of time cast and crew spent outside, given the time of year.
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A location almost as famous as DiCaprio himself.
It's hard to miss the signature rock faces of Drumheller when they appear in The Revenant. Located in the Alberta Badlands, Drumheller is a special place in Canada. Otherwise known as the Dinosaur Capital of the World, it is also home to the hoodoos, tall rock formations that rise up from the area's desert landscape.
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POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT: If you've ever travelled along the Sea to Sky highway in southern B.C., chances are you've driven through the District of Squamish. Known as the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada, the area boasts high cliff faces that attract hundreds of rock-climbers, as well as dense, lush forests and stunning waterfalls.
Winter conditions in Squamish can be brutal for reasons entirely different from those in neighbouring Alberta. It is one of the wettest places in Canada and sees an average of 2,100 millimetres of rain each year.
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Whether you've had a chance to see the movie or not, surely by now you've heard of a graphic scene within the film depicting a vicious bear attack. No actual bears were used in filming, but the chances of spotting one in the area are not unlikely.
Squamish is located in prime bear habitat. Though a grizzly bear is depicted in The Revenant, local officials say black bears are more common.
Despite the array of stunning Iñárritu's vision for the film came at a price.
Production was complicated with a number of issues, many problems related to weather. Freezing temperatures, remote locations and ever-chaging locations took their toll on the cast and crew.
The arrival of warm Chinook winds in southern Alberta (thought to be a troubling sign of climate change by lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio) resulted in a sudden lack of snow. After trucking in snow from other spots as a temporary solution, the production was forced to relocate to snowier settings in Argentina in order to complete the film.
Already the recipient of multiple film awards this year, The Revenant is only one of many award-winning films where Canada plays a significant role in setting (and stealing) the scene.
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Sources:District of Squamish | IMDB | 20th Century Fox
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The word epic is thrown around a lot when it comes to movies, but one film that looks like it will live up to that designation is The Revenant , the newest venture from Birdman director Alejandro Iñárritu. The sweeping vistas in the film are causing fans to wonder where The Revenant was filmed. Unlike many modern 'epics' like Lord of the Rings or Avatar, The Revenant didn't rely on CGI to create or enhance its landscapes, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Iñárritu had some very particular ideas about how he wanted to film the movie in order to get the look that he wanted. For one, he wanted to film the movie chronologically, which is highly unusual for a film and caused major delays in the shooting schedule. He also only wanted to film using natural light, which took forever since they were sometimes limited to around an hour a day, but has the payoff of making everything you see on screen provided by nature. And finally, he wanted to film in very remote locations to capture the true feel of the untouched American Frontier. So where did he go to do all of this?
Mostly Canada. Specifically, Iñárritu shot in the unpopulated wilderness of remote regions in British Columbia and Alberta. Our neighbors to the north have a lot more undeveloped land than the U.S. (Canada has 35 million people, 3 million fewer than California), meaning their forests are largely vast and unspoiled. This makes it the perfect place for Leonardo DiCaprio to eat raw bison liver, and to provide the insane but real visuals the film is destined to become known for. Iñárritu told The Hollywood Reporter about the decision to go au naturale, saying, 'If we ended up in greenscreen with coffee and everybody having a good time, everybody will be happy, but most likely the film would be a piece of shit .. When you see the film, you will see the scale of it, and you will say, 'Wow.'
But the crazy shooting schedule and locations weren't without problems. Due to the director's insistence that the film be shot in sequence, the production ended up missing out on snow in Canada for the film's snowy climax. As a result, they left Canada in search of winter, and ended up in the Tierre del Fuego region of Argentina, near the South Pole. There, Iñárritu found the white stuff he desired for the end of his film, and was able to conclude the shooting of the movie after 10 months — five months longer than originally planned.
After seeing the work that went into The Revenant to get the look and feel of the film right, I have no doubt that this movie will live up to its epic billing. It remains to be seen whether the film will earn DiCaprio his long-overdue Oscar, but at the very least it's going to be something to behold.
Images: 20th Century Fox