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| Timothy Spall stars as JMW turner in the gorgeous Best Cinematography nominee Mr. Turner. |
Each day as we make
our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take
an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows,
and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and
gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.
Best Cinematography
The nominees are:
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Ida
Mr. Turner
This is my favorite category. What distinguishes film as a
storytelling medium from others such as radio or literature or even television
in many cases is its ability to tell stories visually. We take it for granted. With
Facebook and Instagram, we are all essentially telling our life stories through
images, but if you stop for a second and really think about it, it should
become clear what a revolutionary idea that is.
Nothing connects the world like moving images. We cannot all
read the same books or listen to the same speeches, but we all understand that
shadows are scary, chases are thrilling, and pratfalls are funny. All it takes
is the right image, and a filmmaker can speak to the whole world. The cinematographers
are the artists who craft those images, and the best of their work serves as a
masterclass in why films are important.
This year’s nominees run the gamut from war stories to
chamber dramas, color to black and white, and statue still to ever-moving. What
they share, however, is impeccable craftsmanship and a dedication to visual
storytelling. Only one nominee this year is a previous winner, and he is the
most likely and deserving winner as well, so that is where we will begin our
analysis.
Birdman – There is not another film this year that blends the
innovation and integration of director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki’s work
on this picture. A lot has been written about the work, and I have written
about it a number of times, but to see it is to know you are witnessing
greatness. The basic trick of the film is that it looks like one unbroken take.
The camera darts and dives, swoops and spins, but never looks away. Save for
couple moments at the beginning and end, the film’s few edits are hidden within
the structure of the camerawork.
The style is the logical result of the direction Lubezki has
been heading his entire career, particularly in his collaborations with
director Alfonso Cuarón, who is good friends with Birdman director Alejandro González Iñárritu. Cuarón has always
favored long takes, and Lubezki has proven his aptitude with such shooting
conditions time and again. He won the Oscar for his work last year on Cuarón’s Gravity and should probably have another
two for his lensing of Cuarón’s Children
of Men and Terrence Malick’s gorgeous The
Tree of Life. No matter. He will most likely win his second award in a row
this year.
Except for a short segment in the omnibus film To Each His Own Cinema, this is Lubezki’s
first collaboration with Iñárritu, but the two are already hard at work
shooting another film together – The Revenant,
starring Leonardo Dicaprio, which is due out at the end of this year. If the
results of Birdman are any
indication, we should all be very excited about the next collaboration from
these two unique artists.
Mr. Turner – If it were not for the brilliant, boundary-pushing
work of Lubezki, cinematographer Dick Pope’s painterly lensing of Mike Leigh’s JMW
Turner biopic would be this year’s hands-down winner. It is just as deserving,
and in many ways, it is the more classical nominee, a throwback to the old
style of shooting a film. While Lubezki’s camera flies in and out of scenes
like it is on a mission, Pope carefully crafts each moment, each frame for
maximum impact.
The film is about a painter who is famous for his
impressionist landscapes, and Pope steps up to the challenge of matching the
story of England’s greatest artist with some of the most beautiful compositions
you are ever likely to see. While several sequences are set up to recreate the
look and feel of a Turner painting in real life, the work in between these
bravura scenes is just as stark and just as rewarding.
If you are a voter, you could flip a coin to choose between
these two pictures and come up with a deserving winner every time. The best
part of both pieces is how the cinematography is integrated into the
storytelling. These are not self-conscious gimmicks. Lubezki’s unbroken take is
indicative of the maelstrom of activity constantly swirling around the
characters in Birdman, while Pope’s
picture-perfect frames are a window into the world as an artist might see it.
When it comes to picking a winner, you’re damned if you do, and damned if you
don’t.
Ida – One of the best things about the cinematographers’ branch
is that its members are willing to look outside the box for nominees. From
Poland, Ida is nominated for Best
Foreign Language Film this year, in addition to this cinematography nod. It is
highly deserving of the recognition in both cases. Shot in black and white by
the team of Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, Ida tells the story of a Catholic nun who spends a few nights with
a less-than-virtuous aunt before taking her final vows.
Similar to Pope’s work on Mr. Turner, Zal and Lenczewski let the framing do the work for
them, and some of their choices are so brilliant as to boggle the mind. These
are two characters trapped by circumstance and convention, and in nearly every
scene, Zal and Lenczewski place objects in the frame to trap them further. From
car trunks to lamp posts to electrical wires, these two women are constantly
placed in boxes inside boxes, a stunning evocation of the characters’ mindsets
and their place within the context of society as a whole.
The Grand Budapest Hotel – Robert Yeoman is probably the least
assuming of the nominees this year, having shot mostly either independent or
studio comedies throughout his career. He has been the director of photography
on every one of director Wes Anderson’s live-action films, which makes a
certain amount of sense. Anderson has such a unique and specific visual style
that his films could almost only be shot by one person, someone who understands
exactly what the director is going for.
As in each of their previous collaborations, Yeoman does a
great job of balancing Anderson’s usual hyperactivity with an unfailing
precision of movement and framing. Yeoman and Anderson favor symmetrical setups
and proscenium staging, allowing for the maximum amount of action to take place
within the dollhouse like structure of a film in which characters move in packs
from room to room and set to set.
My only real problem with this nomination is how much the
work feels of a piece with what Yeoman and Anderson have done before. They are
not stretching their visual style so much as fine tuning it, but perhaps that
is okay when the style itself is so striking. As I have mentioned, The Grand Budapest Hotel is the first of
Anderson’s films to catch on with the Academy in a big way, and that success
has swept up a lot of Anderson’s below-the-line collaborators, Yeoman among
them.
Unbroken – Roger Deakins is a god among cinematographers and
rightly so. His work with the Coen brothers alone is enough to place him in the
pantheon of the greatest of all time (Fargo,
No Country for Old Men, True Grit, The Man Who Wasn’t There, etc.), not to mention his incomparable
work on films such as The Shawshank
Redemption, Skyfall, and The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford. A living legend, this is his 12th nomination in this
category. He has never won, and this will not be the year that streak ends.
As good as Deakins is, Unbroken
stands as the least impressive among these nominees, primarily because it falls
into the trap of so many recent war films – desaturated colors, poorly
integrated effects, and an overreliance on grand vistas that mean little in
context. Deakins never gives less than 100 percent, and he has been highly
deserving of all his previous nominations, but this seems like one case in
which name recognition alone was enough to get him onto the shortlist.
The final analysis
As I said, you cannot go wrong with either Birdman or Mr. Turner, but now that Lubezki already has the gold seal of
approval from the Academy, there seems to be little in the way of a repeat win
in this category.
Will win: Birdman
Should win:
Birdman
Wish it had been here:
Goodbye to Language
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