Leonardo DiCaprio: “Inarritu has set the bar very high for The Revenant” – Le Figaro

INTERVIEW – While the film of Alejandro Inarritu released in theaters February 24th, Le Figaro American actor met a few days before the Oscars. It is particularly income on extreme shooting conditions to which he was confronted.

LE FIGARO. – Django Unchained , The Wolf of Wall Street now The Revenant … You turn over with the best filmmakers

Leonardo DICAPRIO. – Looking stimulants characters filmed by great directors. We rarely read scripts with complex characters. This is what I aspire to. Favorite films date from the 1970s, when the filmmakers had more power than the studio to create a work of art. I always defer to the director and I try to work with the best of them.

Alejandro Inarritu therefore actually part to you?

Some things he has done in this film is revolutionary, striking. It’s almost virtual reality. This ability to combine it with the epic landscapes David Lean with scenes where we almost feel the breath of the characters … Everything is thought in this movie, but some plans are unheard of. I think some filmmakers look under the microscope a few excerpts of the film wondering how he did it.

You have missed the Oscar for Best Actor three times in the past. Going this year as the favorite. Is it important to win this award?

That would be the icing on the cake. We have not made this film to get a reward, but if we can draw attention to a bold movie it is only positive. This is a unique film, unlike anything I’ve ever done. We were shooting in natural light for only 1 hour, 30 per day! There are thirty different designs. Was repeated for three weeks just for the opening sequence of the movie! Alejandro Inarritu has set the bar so high on the set … I’m not saying I deserve an Oscar, I’m just saying it’s gratifying to see the film to get such recognition.

Alejandro told us that this shoot was the most difficult of his career – eighth straight month in often trying conditions …

It has been for me and all team: a test of endurance for both physical and mental. He had to face a different challenge every day. We knew at the start that we embarked for a new and possibly risky experiment. I never turned in such conditions often suffer the vagaries of a capricious weather which we were completely dependent. In a single day, for example, it was not uncommon to see a variety of changes, alternately from one snowy sun before then up to rain, with considerable

temperature differences caused by it all chinook, this type of foehn wind. And even if we had an intense cold with temperatures sometimes dipped to -28 ° C was really able to realize the effects of global warming, a subject that I know well. For example last winter was the warmest on record in Canada and there was enough snow in Calgary for some sequences that we had to film in Argentina. Besides having shot entirely in natural light, which limited us most of the time in a range of up to two hours to put a stage box. So everything had to be developed and rehearsed meticulously upstream with Swiss watch precision. But you could count on perfectionism, attention to detail and constant vigilance Alejandro which nothing escapes to create this kind of so intense and palpable virtual reality that gives the viewer the impression that he is, at the close to the action …

at one point your character hungry and shivering devouring a buffalo liver …

and it was true! Cru course! The most disgusting is the membrane that surrounds as biting, all the bitterness explodes in the mouth! But the false gelatin that had initially tested too lacked authenticity. And that’s not all: it’s me you see without any rigging refuge in the carcass of my dead horse, diving into the icy river and walk in the snow with a bear skin on the back . Soaked, she weighed in at 50 kilos and I was completely chilled. This, I believe, what I have been harder to do on camera.

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