The Revenant Director Admits Making ‘Irresponsible Decisions’ On Gruelling Shoot

Alejandro G Iñárritu, the director of controversial Oscar favourite ‘The Revenant’, says he made a “bad decision” opting to shoot his movie in the remote wilderness using only natural light, admitting they were lucky no-one died.

“I would say the film is a happy accident of a very bad decision,” Iñárritu told Rolling Stone. “It’s the result of an irresponsible decision that I made.”

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The gruelling nature of the shoot has already passed into legend thanks to a Hollywood Reporter exposé that called the set “a living hell”. Cast and crew were reported to be working in extreme conditions prompting some to call it “the worst experience of their careers”.

Thankfully, the film turned out to be a monster hit, both critically and commercially, but Iñárritu realises it could have gone badly wrong.

“But we need that sometimes – to be naive, blind from reality,” he added. “If not, we will not embark on things. I’ll be an office guy or whatever. I mean, I’m not an idiot – I knew how difficult it would be. But I can feel now how far I was from reality when I was deciding how this was to be made. I’m glad that I made that irresponsible decision, but it could have been really bad. You know what I mean? Like when you climb Mount Everest and nobody dies, but we were so close! It’s that feeling of relief.”

With 12 Academy Awards nominations, including ones for Best Picture and Best Director, ‘The Revenant’ remains a firm favourite to clean up at the Oscars later this month. Leonardo DiCaprio looks set to finally bag an Oscar for his performance as Hugh Glass in the survival epic which saw him eating raw bison liver and sleeping in the carcass of a horse.

“He wanted to go into the heart of darkness,” DiCaprio says of his director, “and not only film nature, but really immerse himself in a completely transformative experience.”

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Image credits: 20th Century Fox/AP