Alejandro G. Iñárritu
272 connections found
View:
Connections, in both directions
Man in the Wilderness (1971)
Directed by Richard C. Sarafian
influenced The Revenant (2015)
Characters Plot Visuals
Glass, who previously served as the inspiration for the title character played by Richard Harris in director Richard C. Sarafian's conspicuously less compelling Man in the Wilderness in 1971, is a man of two worlds.
The legend of American frontiersman and fur trapper Hugh Glass, who was left for dead after being mauled by a bear in the early 1820s, inspired Richard C Sarafian’s 1971 film Man in the Wilderness , in which Richard Harris starred as “Zachary Bass”.
The story inspired the 1971 movie Man in the Wilderness , which starred Richard Harris as Zach Bass, and Michael Punke's novel The Revenant , which Inarritu and Mark L. Smith adapted into the film's screenplay.
Leonardo DiCaprio is Hugh Glass, a real-life 19th century mountain man and guide whose story inspired legends, books, and at least one previous film (Man in the Wilderness with Richard Harris).
The natural-lighting gimmick was done better by Kubrick in Barry Lyndon; the basic story was told before in 1971’s Man in the Wilderness, which took up nearly an hour less of our time; the sometimes discordant score (by Ryuichi Sakamoto among others) recalls Neil Young’s fuzzbox music for Jim Jarmusch’s acid western Dead Man (and this film’s dependence on an Indian helping an ailing white man was already parodied nicely by Jarmusch); and the symbolic heaviness of man against nature got some play in Joe Carnahan’s underrated existential drama The Grey.
In 1971's Man In The Wilderness , an equally loose take on the Hugh Glass legend that renames him Zachary Bass, Richard Harris is mauled by an off-camera beast.
Themes of rapacious greed, western entitlement and cultural intolerance coupled with environmental disregard flow with subtle might, but at the heart of Iñárritu’s woodland tempest looms Glass’ superhuman perseverance, driven by the memory of those he loved and incarnated in the same dreamy sylvan echoes that Terrence Malick brushed so artfully into “The New World.”
The sinuous long takes are an Emmanuel Lubezki specialty, and can’t help but evoke the cinematographer’s work on The New World , an appropriate reference point, perhaps, but also one whose deep, ineffable strangeness on a shot-to-shot level exposes the conventionality of Iñárritu’s aesthetics.
The film opens in a way that reminded me so much of Terrence Malick’s "The New World,” which was also shot by “The Revenant’ cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and that alone made me fearful that we’re in for more of the same.
The film is directed by Alejandro Iñárritu in a Terrence Malick (“The New World”) vein, with shots of the sky through the trees, silhouettes against the setting sun and omniscient overviews of the entire landscape.
But Lubezki’s work is less reminiscent of Birdman than his Terrence Malick collaborations The New World and The Tree of Life, full of gorgeous waking dream imagery and haunting shots of raging fires in a nighttime snowstorm or a bell ringing atop a decimated church.
Many have said the same about Terrence Malick's dreamy visions of a lost America, especially "The New World."
In a performance that melds his cocky motivational speaker from Magnolia with his belligerent, prosthetics-clad studio executive from Tropic Thunder, Cruise plays powerful oil baron Digger Rockwell…
I’ve heard some of my colleagues make comparisons of Digger Rockwell to Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder, but beyond the look, I just didn’t find the performances all that similar.
…or more recently, to 2008’s “Tropic Thunder,” where Cruise played a character like the one he plays here…
You can picture Les Grossman, Cruise’s studio executive from Tropic Thunder, watching the actor’s interpretation and going, “Whoa, whoa, whoa — too fucking much, guy!”
It’s cut from the same cloth as his loathsome Hollywood mogul in Tropic Thunder.
He’s channeling Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder but as an older character with a heavy, fake Southern drawl.
Rope (1948)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
influenced Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), The Revenant (2015)
Visuals
Though shoehorned into three play-like acts, Birdman transpires in one long, flowing, bravura take — which appears to contain some hidden cuts, à la Hitchcock's Rope, and some CG tricks of the sort that blow the illusion by reminding us we're in a realm where anything's possible so nothing's truly wonderful.
It has less to do with the formal stuntwork — which simulates a single elaborately choreographed take, à la Hitchcock's Rope — than with the unflagging momentum of the performances within it.
The much-vaunted single-take effect achieved by DP Emmanuel Lubezki and editors Douglas Crise and Stephen Mirrione (with a couple of exceptions the film appears to play without cuts ) is not a gimmick, but a storytelling technique that achieves an arguably superior effect to that realized by Alfred Hitchcock in "Rope."
The device was perhaps most famously used by Alfred Hitchcock in his 1948 film, “Rope” (though that film does have several hard cuts between reels), and in Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 fantasy, “Russian Ark.”
What isn't in doubt is the fantastic cinematography courtesy of DP Emmanuel Lubezki who employs a near continuous shot throughout the film (with an unknown amount of actual cuts -- presumably across dark scenes much like Alfred Hitchcock used in the somewhat similarly shot "Rope" but likely also elsewhere now that visual effects can be used to create the appearance of seamlessness).
Though it wouldn’t be accurate to say Birdman was filmed in a single long take—there are several moments when characters pass through a darkened space in order to mask visible cuts, the digital-age equivalent of the reel changes in Rope —Iñárritu and Lubezki go to great lengths to make sure the film feels to the viewer like one continuous shot.
1917 (2019)
Directed by Sam Mendes
influenced by Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), The Revenant (2015)
Visuals
Maybe because it sounds near-impossible to streamline the unpredictability of a live battlefield as opposed to, say, the urban Broadway-ness of Birdman or the Berlin nightlife of Victoria.
Like Birdman and Rope before it, the “cheat” cuts in 1917 are easy to spot, but the act of looking for them amidst the soldiers’ trek across torched farmland and sniper-filled, bombed-out towns, and simultaneously taking in the endeavor’s overall technical marvel yields a sense of awe rarely achieved in film.
One year later, Birdman, another film mostly presented as a single shot, would sweep the Oscars.
It’s a trick deployed before, by Alfred Hitchcock in the stage-born 1948 thriller “Rope” and Alejandro González Iñárritu in his 2014 Best Picture Oscar winner “Birdman.”
Essentially filmed in one long, two-hour shot, the film—which features the masterful cinematography of living legend Roger Deakins—is a cinematic feat rarely attempted, though not without precedent (Birdman, Rope, and Russian Ark are other examples of one-shot films).
Director Sam Mendes, telling a tale based on stories that he heard in his youth from his grandfather (who at age 19 had been a messenger for the British Army during WWI) has here combined elements of “Dunkirk” and “Saving Private Ryan,” among others, and used Alejandro González Iñárritu’s single-shot storytelling method (used for “Birdman” and “The Revenant”) to create some impressive, innovative world-building.
This scene, dazzlingly fluid and exciting, recalls the Omaha Beach sequence in "Saving Private Ryan," among other inspirations.
Although his directorial style isn’t quite as self-conscious as it was in Birdman , Iñárritu still makes use of several impressive long takes; the bear attack is as terrifying as anything you’ll see in a horror film this year, and the opening battle scene is reminiscent of the first twenty minutes of Saving Private Ryan .
The film’s opening sequence featuring an attack by a Native American tribe on the hunters is stunning, recalling some of the all-time best cinematic action scenes like Saving Private Ryan .
Whatever “cheating” there might have been with the camerawork snuck past my eye; like the opening of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan , the sequence is a masterstroke of sustained, seamless and cinematically coherent panic.
The carnage is violent and crazed and sloppy with blood, like the opening moments of Saving Private Ryan , with arrows instead of bullets.
An extended set piece showing a raid by Ree Indians on a troupe of American fur traders is straight out of the Saving Private Ryan playbook, with the mobile camera catching sudden-death atrocities at the corner of the frame.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced Amores Perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), Babel (2006)
Plot Visuals
Like Pulp Fiction, Amores Perros focuses on three stories about criminal behavior.
Novelist Guillermo Arriaga's script, while borrowing from "Pulp Fiction," has plenty of engaging surprises of its own.
This movie, a triptych whose overlapping structure is reminiscent of such movies as "Pulp Fiction," "Before the Rain" and "Winter Sleepers," is definitely fierce and most definitely human.
For marketing purposes, Amores Perros has been tagged in America as Mexico's answer to Pulp Fiction.
Without a doubt, the majority of the reviews of Amores Perros, the acclaimed debut feature from Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, will, at one time or another, invoke Pulp Fiction .
To be honest, comparisons between "Pulp Fiction" and "Amores Perros" probably wouldn't be unfair.
Magnolia (1999)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced Digger (2026), Amores Perros (2000)
Characters
In a performance that melds his cocky motivational speaker from Magnolia…
We still talk about his nasty turn as Frank TJ Mackey in Magnolia, for instance…
Personally, though, I kept thinking more about “Magnolia.”
Cruise’s collaboration with Iñárritu feels like a cross between “Magnolia” (1999) and “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” (2014).
‘Digger’ nos devuelve al Cruise de ‘Magnolia’…
…his Digger Rockwell was closer in spirit to the tragic egotism of Magnolia’s Frank T.J. Mackey, complete with a show-stopping monologue where he paints himself a savior from the ills of the world to which he’s contributing.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Digger (2026)
Themes Characters
In other ways it reminds me of the outrageous satire of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick would have loved this movie)…
…going over the top in a way that harks back to Dr Strangelove. The echoes of Stanley Kubrick’s nuclear satire are never far away from the action…
…a rough satirical beast slouching toward Bethlehem, a Southern-fried Dr. Strangelove in dire need of a Terry Southern…
Exaggeration may be a time-honored weapon of satire, but unlike that of such forebears as Dr. Strangelove or Brazil, the parodic energy is never allowed to build.
Hardass Defense Secretary Colonel Fitzgerald (Robert John Burke, basically playing George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove) just wants to bomb the runaway iceberg.
If Birdman and Megalopolis shared a child, it might end up something like Digger…
Digger epitomizes the difference between big swing and hubristic folly more than any film since Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis…
…such bloated recent debacles as Francis Coppola’s “Megalopolis”…
…the first real genuine big-screen folly since Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis…
The two recent films that come to mind which, while the majority disliked, I really enjoyed while at the same time despising are “Don’t Look Up” and “Megalopolis.”
Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis was a similar baroque folly, but that film had a superpower that kept it from being a baffling failure: sincerity.
As other commentators have noted, the filmmakers could well be paying homage to Luis Bun~uel, "Tristana" in particular, as this sequence unfolds with pitch-dark humor as two heretofore fortunate and privileged people have been protected from the shallowness of their feelings for each other.
Fans of Bunuel’s 1970 film, “Tristana,” will see Bunuel’s influence all over this story, but Inarritu nevertheless makes it his own as he eventually connects it to the film’s final act, “El Chivo and Maru.”
So when the showdown comes, as the movie promises, the sequence feels unsatisfying, not like that in, say, Ethan and Joel Coen’s “True Grit,” where a young girl gets justice for a murdered father, but rather where two men you barely know, seeing them only in dire circumstances, are locked in a death struggle not unlike McTeague and Marcus in Death Valley at the climax of Erich von Stroheim’s “Greed.”
I told him it reminded me of Erich Von Stroheim's exhilarating silent classic Greed , a movie that even in abridged form (Von Stroheim's original cut, long lost, was nearly nine hours) is an uncompromising, visceral experiment in naturalism.
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced Amores Perros (2000)
Themes Plot Visuals
Recalling Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction - but edgier than both - this is a hell of a first film.
And while the director is no doubt sick of hearing the Pulp Fiction comparisons (he told one interviewer he was influenced more by Faulkner than Tarantino), the similarities seem about as coincidental as Reservoir Dogs' to City on Fire, right down to the closing segment of a badass's bloody path to redemption.
El Chivo plays "Long Cool Woman in a Red Dress" before toying with his kidnap victim recalling Michael Madsen's far more violent scene in Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs."
Its world of violence and subtropical beauty, its passion and heartbreak, its grimy realism and its sneaky, almost spiritual touches of surrealism mark it as a powerful and original work, the best and boldest debut film I've seen since at least "American Beauty" and maybe "Reservoir Dogs."
Like a couple of other powerful debuts from the last decade (I'm thinking of American Beauty and Reservoir Dogs), its dark, almost surrealist tone escalates it high above the usual gory gunfare and marks it as a film to be reckoned with.
The self-seriousness of these struggles is underscored by the fact that Chase and Glass were both real dudes — the Essex ordeal would provide fuel for Moby Dick, while Glass's life inspired the 2002 Michael Punke novel on which The Revenant is based.
Aunque el guión está parcialmente inspirado en el libro de Michael Punke, cuyo personaje principal realmente existió y forma parte del folklore estadounidense, el encuentro entre hombre-bestia y bestia sirve como metáfora de la lucha por lo imposible (similar a la manera en la que Herman Melville lo acentó en el mítico viaje hacia el abismo del navío comandado por el capitán Ahab en contra de la ballena blanca, en Moby Dick; o como lo es el propio quehacer cinematográfico para muchos, un devenir constante de tropiezos y sinsabores superados por la fortaleza y la fe de su director, y por quienes cierran los ojos a la realidad y deciden creer ciegamente en él).
Life Itself (2018)
Directed by Dan Fogelman
influenced by Babel (2006), Amores Perros (2000)
Plot Themes
As in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 2007 drama Babel , everything is interrelated.
It essentially brings nothing new to the table, and Fogelman’s vision doesn’t break new ground, considering the cinematic catalogue has already explored this concept with films such as Babel, Vantage Point and even the Oscar-winning Crash (the less said about that film, the better) with various degrees of success.
Think Crash or Babel , movies trying so hard to Be About Something they come across as maudlin.
An unholy combination of “Rashomon” and “Babel,” it strings together seemingly disparate plotlines into one massive, messy tableau of (sorry, has to be done) life itself, a life that zings toward the warm embrace of death.
This is one of those Crash, Babel, or Magnolia-esque dramas where all of the seemingly disparate stories are connected in some type of way.
They're all cogs in a "we're all connected (by senseless death, trauma, and self-hate; also baby-making)" construct that feels more artificial and inorganic by far than the most grotesquely contrived trash of the 2000s hyperlink narrative fad; it feels like a version of the already-not-very-good 2006 Babel that was made by serial killers.
Watching this irresistibly pretty movie star pantomime panic, I was reminded of Robert Redford as the titular hero of the 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson , another prestigious nineteenth-century survivalist drama of literary pedigree, and one that also had a difficult, although ultimately neatly controlled production.
Based on a true story, it’s a masterpiece of suffering; it’s Robert Redford’s “Jeremiah Johnson” on steroids—a massive, muck-crawling, muddy-bearded, raw-meat-strewn, morose mess of hypothermic hatchet-versus-knife-fighting, flintlock-swinging, ursine destruction, and wheezing-grunting-snarling madness—wherein Leonardo DiCaprio’s Hugh Glass displays for our “entertainment” the Hobbesian creed to perfection.
It's Jeremiah Johnson meets Apocalypse Now.
Iñárritu famously went for realism here, putting his cast and crew through all kinds of misery, but the end result is simply spectacular, something like the gorgeous naturalism of Malick's "The New World" crossed with "Jeremiah Johnson."
In keeping with the canine title references, the final shot brings to mind the post-apocalyptic world of 1975's sci-fi cult film "A Boy and His Dog."
Exaggeration may be a time-honored weapon of satire, but unlike that of such forebears as Dr. Strangelove or Brazil, the parodic energy is never allowed to build.
…think Roy Andersson meets Roland Emmerich, or The Death of Stalin with a Brazil wax…
The Player (1992)
Directed by Robert Altman
influenced Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Visuals
It is clear that González Iñárritu and his team of writers studied closely the films of Robert Altman, “The Player” being a touchstone, and “Short Cuts,” also, based on Carver’s writings.
For movie geeks, the mind starts thinking of classic movies that open with long tracking shots, such as Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" or Robert Altman's "The Player."
It all ends up unexpectedly Altmanesque, with “The Player” and “A Prairie Home Companion” coming to mind.
Questions of obscene wealth are paired with a profound examination of artistic creation, echoing Babylon (2022) and Asteroid City (2023).
…whether Iñárritu’s all-the-world’s-a-stage conceit is familiar (Asteroid City got there first)…
Wes Anderson’s sublime Asteroid City (2023) recently approached a similar meta-narrative with a wizened melancholy…