Leonardo The Bearman
Christopher Benfey writes: ‘The ordeal of filming “The Revenant,” Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s fur-trade odyssey of survival and sweet revenge, has received a great deal of attention: for its remote wilderness locations in Alberta and Argentina; for the director’s mad insistence that the scenes be shot in narrative sequence, in natural light, with minimal digital intervention; for the grueling schedule imposed on actors and crew. This is all a bit reminiscent of the hair-raising stories of the production of Werner Herzog’s rainforest epic “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” in which arduousness is felt to entail authenticity, as though the movie is a reenactment of the events it records rather than a mere Hollywood facsimile.’
