Its settings define “The Revenant”
The scenery and location are crucial to the plot. After all, it’s Glass’s fight for survival through the freezing wilderness that makes the movie so emotionally affecting.
In fact, DiCaprio himself was by no means spared the physical challenges that his character faced. He was quoted in an interview with Yahoo, saying, “I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly.”
Meanwhile, the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu, said that finally completing “The Revenant” felt like “landing after a long and turbulent flight”. The whole process was filled with numerous challenges for the whole crew. This was due to the remote natural settings they used in the midst of winter.
Where was “The Revenant” filmed?
The crew filmed the majority of “The Revenant” in Canada.
According to Looper, they filmed quite a few scenes in an area of the Canadian Rockies west of Calgary, Alberta, in Kananaskis Country.
Filming then continued in the Bow Valley over the course of the 11-month shooting schedule. This region is full of parks and natural reserves that are extremely remote and mostly undisturbed by human habitation.
Difficulties of filming in the Calgary wilderness
Notably, director Alejandro Iñárritu was committed to using only natural light for all cinematography. The days were quite short during the Calgary winter, writes Atlas of Wonders, and “traveling to the distant sets took so much time that the team had only a couple of hours a day for filming.”
Combined with the region’s capricious weather, this is why Iñárritu said this of Calgary, “Sometimes the weather would change seven times a day in Calgary. It’s the worst place for any producer to shoot a film. But it’s an incredible landscape, so we didn’t have a choice.”
Fortress Mountain Resort
According to Screen Daily, “The production had to transport horses and a crane 8,000 feet up Fortress Mountain in Alberta. Planes dropped explosives to create an avalanche the film-makers had to capture in camera in a single take.”
British Columbia: the location of the bear mauling scene
The scene in which a grizzly bear attacks Hugh Glass is perhaps the most memorable of the entire film. It is absolutely pivotal to the plot. Therefore, many readers have probably wondered where they filmed this scene.
Unlike most of the movie, this scene was filmed in the wilderness of British Columbia, in the Upper Squamish Valley, writes Lonely Planet. This was also the location of several other scenes when the production needed woodlands and campsites.
Scenes filmed outside Canada
Although most of “The Revenant” was filmed in Canada, there are several notable exceptions throughout. One of these is the scene where Glass ends up going over some rapids and a waterfall. They filmed this scene at Kootenai Falls in Montana.
The crew also made their way south all the way to Tierra del Fuego at Argentina’s southern tip toward the end of the movie. The snow had begun to melt during the course of their film shoot, with one month’s worth of filming left to complete. They needed to find another location with plenty of snow.
The cold weather is integral to the plot of the film, and a sudden lack of snow would present continuity issues. Surprisingly, the southernmost point of Argentina was a suitable alternative. This is where they filmed the crucial scene in which Glass finally locates and fights Tom Hardy’s character, John Fitzgerald.
Love all of DiCaprio’s movies? Then you may also want to check out our guide on the “Don’t Look Up” filming locations!
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