Dersu Uzala

Alejandro González Iñárritu told cinematographer Lubezki to study Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (1966) and Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala, how these filmmakers filmed nature not as backdrop but as spiritual force. DiCaprio's face pressed against snow and rock becomes an extension of geography itself. Tarkovsky's belief that landscape has interiority runs through every frame.

George Lucas and Irvin Kershner studied Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala (1975), Kurosawa's film about crossing the Siberian wilderness. They wanted Hoth to feel like an actual arctic landscape, flat, unforgiving, cold as antagonist. Kurosawa's mastery of shooting figures moving through snow against absolute whiteness became the blueprint for the ice planet.