Director Alejandro González Iñárritu Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films

[dramatic music]

Stop the music. [music stops]

Music is the king of everything.

It's like God, it's the spirit of art.

So I think musically, I think it's important

for me to figure it out.

How it sounds, what is the beats, where to cut,

where the drums come, where the solo comes.

And I think if you have that

at least for me, is crucial.

[upbeat intro music]

Revenant

He's afraid.

He knows how far I came for him.

Same as that elk.

When they get afraid, they run deep into the woods.

[Alejandro] I prepared that film in 2011.

I start scouting and guarding and storyboarding

and I start working with visual effects.

And I was very excited about the experience to

to allow myself to go to the nature.

And then I realized that there is no that kind

of romantic thing of losing yourself in nature.

No, it's a war. [laughs]

You are in war with nature to make it to work what you need.

Leonardo, he knew what

how difficult it would be physically.

And the commitment to living in Calgary

for six months and to go through all that physical thing.

It took him a little bit for him to really jump in.

Once he jumped in, it was the best collaborator

I could have, the most brave

and passionate and perfectionist

and he understands filmmaking.

He has worked with great directors.

And so he has been so long since he was 17 years

that he understand the whole [speaking in foreign language].

The conditions were massive.

So you need a special wardrobe.

You need ridiculously, you know, this wool and carpet

for the feet of every horse.

So the horses were completely warm

and nice and all, we all were suffering.

But the animal guys were taking care of that.

Every single horse has almost socks, you know what I mean?

[guns firing] [bodies thudding]

[Alejandro] The first battle,

the physical scenes that he went through were

extremely precise, physically, and actually dangerous.

Because if you do a bad move,

the choreography with this kind of stunts

when you are doing battles with such a speed

and camera movings that are so precise.

Again, this is not cut, cut, cut.

There are no pieces.

These are long pieces of seven minutes with running

running, choking, this, that, that, that.

You put yourself at risk.

And sometimes people get a little crazy

in the films and sometimes stunts

or people that--it can go wrong very easily.

And I never see him afraid or complaining or afraid of, oh

this horse is passing very close to me

or this powder is exploding, or this guy is very tough.

He actually was embracing the moment

and allowing himself to be exposed

and perfectly in time and with truthfulness

in his eyes and emotion, which is not easy.

He was not about me, me, me, me, me. What about me?

He didn't care.

He was like seeing the whole thing.

That's what I'm saying.

He's a filmmaker that understand that

everybody is just a piece

of something that is bigger than any of us, you know?

So that was grateful.

Birdman

[Narrator] We were the real thing, Riggan.

We had it all.

We gave it away.

[Man] Breathing in.

[Narrator] We handed these posers the keys to the kingdom.

[Man] Breathing out.

[Narrator] You listening to me?

I shot that film in 19 days, less than four weeks.

And it was crazy.

Keaton was kind of the first thing and

and obvious because obviously I love Michael Keaton,

I think he's an amazing actor.

And then as a person, I was able to meet him

and he's a beautiful human being.

But I think obviously there was some resonance

about what happened to him

and the Batman thing, there was similarities.

Let's put it, it was not about Michael Keaton

but it's about actor that's only getting

to and swallowed into the kind of universe of superheroes.

And then they regret or they are

completely transforming their perception.

And it's hard to get back to be like, you know

like a prestigious actor of theater in New York.

Edward Norton is a, you know

great theater actor in New York.

He wanted to make this character so well

because he told me, Alejandro

I know this guy, I know very well.

I can be that guy.

No, no, no, take-- No, no, forget, forget that.

Just, just stay with me. Yeah

I'm the wrong person to ask, he says

Right. but what, what is that?

What's the intention in that?

Is he, is he fed up with the subject, so he's changing it?

Is he deflecting guilt over the marriage?

And here's the thing, you've got four lines

after that that all say the same thing.

I didn't even know the man I, I, I

I only heard his name mentioned in passing

I think was the first time in my life where I was

in a set and I couldn't stop laughing.

I mean, I was ruining scenes because I was like

because these guys make me laugh so much

and I enjoyed so much.

But there was a moment that I was, we were

rehearsing the scene where for the first time

Michael invite Edward as a character.

And then he said, what about if we do that?

And they are going around the little table

and he's trying to direct him

and to propose and obviously this prick

that Edward Norton character is, saying, what about that?

And he start to manipulate the director, you know?

And we were doing that and I was,

as a director telling them what I needed

or what I thought was good.

What about if we do that, the camera will do,

and then Edward was telling me,

what about if we do that, what about?

Anyway, after 70 times that he was

trying to tell me what I should do, I start laughing.

I said, do you know what's happening? What?

You are exactly doing what the character is

doing in this scene.

And so he realized and we start laughing

about how a mirror in a mirror in a mirror we were playing

there and it was so fun.

The reason I think I got into this different kind

of approach or design of making films was because of need.

Sometimes, the restrictions and limitations are your best,

at least creatively.

So I was so reducing money.

I didn't have enough money. I didn't have enough time.

The St. James theater only allow us to shoot for five days

because they are always booked all year for years.

But there was a coincidence that just a theater

chapter played through the other was

like a five days hiatus and we have this open thing.

And I rehearse every movement, every step,

every rhythm, even the measures of the walls, everything.

The lights, study where the window will be, all the needs.

And so the stage, all the barrels

of the theater were designed and built outside New York.

But when he comes out of the Times Square

there was no way to design or.

I have money for

30 extras and that's it.

And I could not close Times Square,

I need to shoot it with people and not in a,

you know, not at 3:00 AM.

And one day Chi and I were walking to have breakfast

on Saturday and I saw this military band of these kids

playing super cool with some cool bangs

and everybody was watching them

because it was very noisy and cool rhythm.

And I got this idea, I said, this is exactly what we need.

We need something to distract the tourist, you know, in

in Times Square.

And let's just get there.

And then while they are watching these kids,

we will be walking with these guys.

[Woman] Can we take one picture?

[marching band playing drums] Not now.

No, just one picture!

[crowd talking over each other]

Hey Birdman, you suck. You suck! Ha!

And it work. I don't know how it work

because I thought it would be Michael Keaton in underwear.

It'll be 1000 people looking

to the camera and saying stupid things.

And everybody got, seeing these kids.

And if you see the film, it's exactly that.

We just have 30 extras

and we distract them with like bees with honey,

[laughs] while we were getting away with murder.

The people say why it's in one shot?

And it was because obviously

because this is again happening in

in the consciousness of a person

dealing with his own ego and his super ego.

And I want the audience to be in a radical point

of view and to live exactly what he was going through.

And then, because I will not have editing

and a comedy is made of editing

I needed something to guide me, again, music and rhythm.

And I invite Antonio Sanchez

I'm a huge fan of Pat Metheny, the musician.

We became friends.

Antonio, a Mexican drummer, has been his drummer

for many years.

And I said, what about if you just start getting

and I have some ideas, and I knew the sequences.

So he and I got into a studio

in New York like three weeks before start shooting.

And I was describing to him the images

like the, the sequence.

And this one is a little soft

and this one is a little emotional, this one is very hard.

And he was just improvising jazzy.

[scats]

And before start shooting, I got a lot

of tracks that informed me during the things about that.

And it was kind of pre-editing element for me to be getting

and the actors getting the rhythm and the vibe.

Babel

Babel was about these four stories

of characters that will never been

they will never been physically in the same place.

They will probably will never know each other existence

but no matter how, whatever actions they are doing

at that time, it will change and affect the life

of each of all the other, three other characters

they didn't know, which is kind of the

butterfly kind of theory.

So that was an extreme kind of exercise

with no physicality differently from

Amores Perros and 21 Grams.

And about the impossibility of communication, right?

And that's why the Babel title came, like it's a

Tower of Babel as this punishment that we got

and I think we are living now.

I think the internet could be kind of that

that we are supposedly connected

but we speak different language and we think

that we are speaking, we are completely disassociated.

Half of that film was shot in Morocco.

And we were shooting in very, very, very humble poor towns

near Western Sahara.

So the experience of shooting those scenes there

with the non-actors, all of those Moroccan

characters were non-actors that I trained with them.

And then you are putting all these people that has

never seen a camera and with Cate Blanchett to

perform the veterinarian and all that scenes

that were very intense where she's bleeding.

And all those circumstances that I was basically exposed to

and exposing all these actors and all the crew that we went

we need to achieve some truthfulness about that.

It was an extremely beautiful experience, you know

challenging one, but at the, at the same time was informing

while I was doing that,

that I was in Babel.

The language was not

helping to get what I needed

and it was just emotional things

that were able to

get these guys to understand what I was needed.

And once they get into the motion, it was amazing.

But the language, the words were useless, you know,

and that was super interesting about it, you know?

That it was just about emotional exercise or

or an image that was triggered to them.

I remember there was this guy that was supposedly the guy

that shot to Kate and he has an amazing face,

like a mysterious guy.

But when he laughed, he was with no tooth and

he was the most sweet, almost little kid,

but he was an old man.

And he couldn't

cry and he supposedly has to cry

in the moment that the police arrive.

And I have this incredible actress

that is Hiam Abbass, which is Palestinian,

and she was helping me to translate to them.

And suddenly Hiam said something about her mother

and apparently he never went to see his mother buried.

And in the moment that he got that image

and that memory,

and we could penetrate that. Boom!

[shouting in foreign language]

[Alejandro] And a burst of crying and it was truthful

and then we start shooting and then he couldn't stop.

So I said, okay, we finish. [dramatic, fake crying]

So what I'm saying, it was very beautiful how

emotions are the universal language, you know?

Amores Perros

[dramatic music]

This was

powerfully written by Guillermo Arriaga.

I developed with him for three years

and we talk endlessly about,

first of all, you know, the different relations between

Chivo, which is the old man

whose family is the dogs.

He lives with his family of dogs and

the affection that he feels for them.

And then you have these other characters

which in a way it's, yeah

it's a family dog that suddenly turns to be a great fighter.

And then you have other guy, which is basically,

the dogs are utilitarian and to make money

and to savage them, to destroy, you know,

to use them as warriors.

So yes, there's a different attachment

to dogs or animals as in real life happen.

The difficulty was how I could make

those relations feel real.

So we have a lot of

months in advance

with a great trainer.

Larry Casanova was called.

And this guy, he was an animal lover

and he train all these animals and

he got these street dogs to,

I put Emilio Echevarría, the actor of Chivo,

to really spend months with these guys in order

that when he walks the dogs were really attached to him.

So you can see that in the film.

And then obviously, Gael García Bernal or the other actor,

they were terrified about dogs.

And these dogs were real dogfight dogs, you know,

that are super difficult to control

because they are beast and they can really bite you.

And we have several events that were very close to

having an accident, but they have to overcome their fear.

I think every film until Birdman, I shot it chronologically

by the script because, for me it was very important to be

understanding and having the opportunities

to maybe shift things depending on how things were evolving

and to have the actors understanding their own journey

in a chronological order, very radical even when

it was a nightmare for producers and locations.

But I think for me has been crucial to, to make a film

in a chronological order, to be able to be growing with it.

21 Grams

[Reverend] How'd it go?

[Jack] Not good, Reverend.

In one ear, out the other.

Be patient.

All it takes is one sheep in a thousand, Jack.

Come on.

[Bald Man] Good afternoon, Reverend.

Hey Wolf, you still having that birthday party Wednesday?

My place, Bubba.

We were developing this script and

and there was this characteristic

of the role that Benicio del Toro play.

And there was this religious relation

with faith and the way this character was feeling.

And I felt that it was very much into these possibilities

of shooting the south of the United States

where sometimes religion can get kind of very passionate

and reductive in some way that the relation is like

I'm good, I'm gonna be good, I'm bad, I'm gonna be punished.

It was the first city in Memphis that I touched.

I embarked myself when I was 17 years in a boat,

in a cargo boat.

And that was the first city that I hid

in United States through the Mississippi.

So anyway, a lot of things was coincided to

make my first American film there.

So in a way, it was not planned

but everything start just to point to that direction.

And I find myself in Memphis

for six months shooting this film.

And I remember that even talking in English, for me

my English is bad, but at that time it was much worse.

It was worse.

So for me to explain, I had to have surgery after,

because my vocal cords, I was using it differently

because when you speak English,

you have to use differently your cords.

And they was raspy, so I got into a surgery.

At that time, you know, for me, the eyes and the features

of somebody is the story of somebody.

It's the map, it's the emotional map

as powerful in any landscape.

You know, you can really see a lot of the past,

a lot of the fears, a lot of the joy,

a lot of the complexity of human being.

If you point it out in the right direction

with the right lighting, there's a lot to be revealed

in one close up.

And there is nobody better than

operating the camera handheld, which is very difficult,

than Rodrigo Prieto because he's a painter.

You know, the problem with handheld cameras is

if it's overused, it's already kind of too overused

like that.

So there is no reason why to move that.

So you just get nauseous about it or there is no reason.

But Rodrigo, in a way, you know, the

every movement of the actor, every reason to be moved,

he moved or every reason to be stay, he stay.

And we were shooting all the time with 40 millimeters

lenses, which was my favorite one at that time.

I think Amores Perros and that one, I think we shot it

in 40 millimeters all the time, which for me,

kind of, that's where the vision is.

These films were much more about

the chances of improvisation and things, and again

capturing with the camera very natural,

very, very, very, very raw.

Biutiful

I think this film reflects a lot of

where I was at that time as a person,

you know I was in a very low kind of thing.

I was really seeing all these immigration things going on

in Europe, like all these African people completely thrown

out in the streets where all these incredible

rich cultures are not allowing them.

So as an immigrant, I always has been

[speaking foreign language] or Carne y Arena,

the virtual reality thing that I did

about immigration, crossing the border.

It's a theme that maybe because I'm an immigrant,

it's always very close.

So I was observing kind of, those kind of things.

[people shouting]

And I was thinking about death.

I was turning 50 years old and I think that hit me.

So it's a film that is very deep and personal.

It's dark.

I'm very proud of it.

When it came out, it was trash.

It was a disaster.

Now it seems that a lot of people say,

oh, it's your best film.

And I said, wow, sometimes films takes time

to really, you know, breathe.

For me, the exercise here was I have never made

a film about one character.

And for me it was terrifying to say

now I have just one character in one film

a narrative that is chronological

and much more conventional.

But the one character, the way it was for me

inspiring this father, trying to get care of other peoples

and help them immigrate and help their kids and try to get

through challenges and then thinking about the others.

I start playing with elements that were not real.

If we could see the motion of somebody, how they will look,

what are the elements that can be manifested there.

So I start playing with that,

with that super encounter of the father at the end.

[boy speaking foreign language]

[snow crunching]

And again, it's because maybe my age start

inviting me to think about what I'm gonna leave here.

Bardo

[speaking foreign language]

I have never worked with this kind of material

that I closed my eyes, I went, I recouped some things

that were emotionally important

and there was not necessarily truth,

as that's why the False Chronicle of a Handful

of Truths, actually things that I do not understand.

So all these things for me was a way to get some events

or some personal intimate things

and some collective memories of the things that has made us

as Mexicans and bring in there and then lying down, I said

holy shit, I don't know what to do with this.

It's a, you know, there is a story with no story

but at the same time, I think true fiction

in a way and to lie about them

and to really that you make, it's a way to heal.

It's a way to put light in the darkness.

I lived in Mexico

35, 36 years, let's say.

So it's my city, you know,

it's my town.

Obviously 20 years, 21 years has passed,

so things has changed.

It's not the same when I left.

But at the same time, it's like an old new friend

that you know very well, that you haven't seen in years,

and you connect in one second.

So that's very inspiring

and especially the sound of the city.

You know, there's something very beautiful about

the soundtrack of Mexico City and the smells.

That's what I miss much more.

When you live in United States, you miss

that [speaks foreign word] as we said, you know?

The relation between Mexico and United States,

our stories are completely blended, right?

In the last 200 years, but it's a complicated one.

And it has been friendly, but very contradictory and

very different with different sides.

And there's a lot of open wounds, let's put it that way.

And that the Mexican-American War as they call it,

it was 175 years ago and it was a very traumatic experience.

Because where I shoot is the Castillo de Chapultepec,

the Chapultepec Castle that was built by the Spanish

in the 1600s.

And you can tell the story of Mexico basically there.

Cause later, you know, that's where I think

the American military came in at the end of the war

and they took over and they slaughtered

all these little kids

and then this mythology appears

that the [speaks foreign word], which is kind of a myth

that has been built in the narrative

of the heroic act they did.

But everybody knows that is not true.

But in a way, I want to approach this with sense

of humor of how ridiculous the both sides of the story.

One denying the fact that it was actually an invasion

that they, you know, that time they took half

of our country for 15 million pesos.

And the way we told our story

in our side too is a little bit ridiculous, you know?

So in a way I'm questioning the narratives of

both sides with humor in a kind of a dream state.

And execution was extremely difficult,

I think more difficult than The Revenant.

To close the city at the center, nobody has seen downtown

like that because this is the heart of the city.

All that sequence where he's walking at night

and the sun goes down in the middle of the city

with all these people because there's 120,000 disappearances

in Mexico in the last 10 years, which is kind of,

how you explain that by just, I wanted just to,

with an image what we feel about, how it feels to be

a possible victim of that with no reason.

And the sun goes down and all that part that he's walking

at night is a day-for-night shooting,

which is a technique that is used

but we need to have a very precise position

of the sun and close every street

that has that kind of moonlight sensation.

So everything was, we have to really analyze every day to

understand what is the light position to get exactly

in the top of the buildings

a little, you know, spread of that light.

So again, it requires a lot of thought in every shot.

We shot it in Zócalo, which is exactly

where the Aztec empire was there, so all the pyramids

were destroyed and those pyramids are the stones

of the cathedral.

So, in a way it was for me, important to be shooting

those scenes in the real locations.

You know, was that reinterpretation and actually even

with humor too, about things that has been open wounds

we maybe not answered yet.