Is this the most committed performance of all… | Little White Lies

Is this the most com­mit­ted per­for­mance of all time?

14 Jan 2016

Words by Tom Bond

A bearded man in a tattered hooded coat, standing in a snowy, mountainous landscape.
A bearded man in a tattered hooded coat, standing in a snowy, mountainous landscape.
Leonar­do DiCaprio’s tor­tured turn in The Revenant remind­ed us of anoth­er even more aston­ish­ing show­ing from an A‑list star.

Have you heard about the shoot for The Revenant? If so, you’ll know that it was appar­ent­ly no pic­nic for the cast and crew – Leonar­do DiCaprio and sev­er­al oth­ers have been out­spo­ken in recent inter­views about the film’s gru­elling pro­duc­tion, dur­ing which they endured sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures, a phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly demand­ing sched­ule and, in DiCaprio’s case, an entrée of raw bison liver.

DiCaprio may well have earned the crit­i­cal praise that’s being heaped on his blis­tered, bear-clawed shoul­ders for his Oscar-nom­i­nat­ed turn. But in the long-stand­ing cin­e­mat­ic tra­di­tion of actors suf­fer­ing for their art, an even more com­mit­ted per­for­mance stands out. The film is Buried, and the actor in ques­tion is Ryan Reynolds.

Buried begins in total dark­ness. We hear the sound of breath­ing. It grows loud­er, more pan­icked. In extreme close-up we see Ryan Reynolds’ dilat­ed left pupil as his Zip­po lighter flick­ers to life. As he whim­pers for help from behind a gag, the cam­era pulls back reveals the full hor­ror of our protagonist’s predica­ment. He’s been buried alive.

That syn­op­sis alone is the stuff of night­mares. But what makes it even more daunt­ing for an actor is that the film nev­er once leaves the con­fines of the cof­fin. Apart from a hand­ful of sup­port­ing actors, who are only ever heard over the phone, Reynolds is the only per­son on-screen for the entire 90-minute run­time. In real terms, he has said that this equat­ed to, spend­ing 12 hours [a day], for 17 days straight, hav­ing a pan­ic attack.”

While the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of film­ing meant that Buried wasn’t shot entire­ly inside a sealed cof­fin, direc­tor Rodri­go Cortés and the pro­duc­tion team were deter­mined to get as close to the action as pos­si­ble. Cortés shot with sev­en dif­fer­ent coffins, each with their own affec­tion­ate nick­name – The Jok­er’ is our per­son­al favourite – and designed to allow dif­fer­ent cam­era angles. All were shot in total dark­ness, save the lighter and mobile phone that Reynolds uses. Reflect­ing on the shoot, Reynolds has said: I think I sus­tained more injuries on this movie than on any action movie I’ve ever done. Basi­cal­ly, it was like wear­ing a sweater made entire­ly of wood, sand and blood.”

Count­less minor injuries made for a pun­ish­ing film­ing expe­ri­ence. There were no bro­ken bones or deep wounds, but Buried isn’t the kind of film defined by a sin­gle trau­ma; it’s death by a thou­sand cuts. As Cortés explains on a behind-the-scenes fea­turette: “[Reynolds] went back to LA bleed­ing with real blood, with real war injuries. His fin­gers were fried because of the lighter and skin­less basi­cal­ly. He was destroyed.”

Yet the phys­i­cal pun­ish­ment Reynolds endured was noth­ing com­pared to the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma. As he says, claus­tro­pho­bia is a pri­mal fear that exists with­in every­body,” and it often became too much for him. There were times when I couldn’t get out of the cof­fin with any ease so I just had to stay in there with 50 – 60 pounds of wood on your chest press­ing down so you start to have moments of pan­ic.” One woman played all the oth­er roles on the phone dur­ing film­ing, so when­ev­er she heard his pan­ic attacks start­ing she would talk about mead­ows and wide open spaces to try and calm him down.

On top of that, Reynolds was hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing so much inside the cof­fin that he would keep pass­ing out dur­ing takes. Cortés asked him why he kept fad­ing out and whis­per­ing, with­out real­is­ing it was because he was black­ing out. Things got so bad for Reynolds that on sev­er­al occa­sions the crew had to rip the lid off the cof­fin dur­ing a take, con­vinced that the actor was gen­uine­ly trau­ma­tised by the experience.

Life wasn’t much bet­ter for Reynolds out­side those cof­fin walls. Bare­ly any of the crew at the Barcelona loca­tion spoke Eng­lish, so it was a lone­ly expe­ri­ence, punc­tu­at­ed by bouts of insom­nia. He admits that, you attach that anec­dote with a bit of glib­ness, but it was actu­al­ly real­ly awful. I don’t know if you’ve ever had insom­nia, but it’s a real­ly ter­ri­ble feel­ing when it’s days and weeks on end.” Reynolds also com­pared the expe­ri­ence to, suf­fer­ing some bizarre form of post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der… I just couldn’t real­ly get my shit together.”

Reynolds’ final day on set was pos­si­bly the tough­est, as it involved a scene where he was briefly buried alive for real. Sand pours through the bro­ken cof­fin lid, sub­merg­ing him in a moment that required para­medics to stand­by in case any­thing went wrong. He has described that day as, unlike any­thing I expe­ri­enced in my life, and I nev­er ever want to expe­ri­ence that again.”

Buried was a bru­tal expe­ri­ence for Reynolds, both phys­i­cal­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, and it real­ly shows in a per­for­mance of real pan­ic and raw emo­tion. The film may have received mixed reviews upon its ini­tial release in 2010, but the aston­ish­ing com­mit­ment of its tor­ment­ed lead makes it ripe for a reappraisal.

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