Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.
Best Cinematography
The nominees are:
El Conde
Killers of the Flower Moon
Maestro
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
I don’t have the official numbers on this, nor the time and patience to go through and confirm, but I would guess this year features the most nominees at least partially in black and white since the Academy stopped giving separate awards for color and black-and-white photography in 1967. Of the five nominees, only Killers of the Flower Moon does not feature lengthy stretches in black and white.
More than likely, this is just an interesting anomaly rather than the start of a trend. In recent years, there has often been a single black-and-white nominee representing the art form, such as The Tragedy of Macbeth, The Lighthouse, or Ida. Sometimes, that movie can even win, like Mank or Roma.
And, really, if we’re being honest, only one film in this bunch is a true black-and-white movie. The others simply have lengthy stretches without color for fairly clear thematic reasons. Not for nothing, I thought the actual black-and-white movie of the bunch was the best cinematography of the year.
El Conde
Speak of the devil (if you’ve seen the movie, pun intended), Ed Lachman’s gorgeous photography on Pablo Larraín’s historical fantasy-horror mashup absolutely floored me. Lachman has two previous nominations for his work on Todd Haynes films (Far from Heaven and Carol). He was also set to do this year’s May December with Haynes but broke his leg two weeks before shooting and had to bow out. We probably don’t deserve the embarrassment of riches anyway (no shade to Christopher Blauvelt’s work, which is lovely).
Lachman and Larraín use light and shadow to turn dictator Augusto Pinochet’s world into a gothic nightmare. The effect is to elevate the very real crimes of Pinochet into the realms of the phantasmagorical, forcing us to ask how such villainy could truly exist. But, we know the history. We know it exists. And, Lachman paints a picture so bold, imaginative, and clear that it becomes impossible to deny.
Killers of the Flower Moon
This is Rodrigo Prieto’s third consecutive nomination for a collaboration with Martin Scorsese, having previously been recognized for The Irishman and Silence. Frankly, he should have won for Silence, but that was the year of La La Land, which was a crafts juggernaut, while Silence did not catch on with the Academy. Their loss.
When you hear the words Scorsese and western, you already know you’re going to be in for something special visually. Prieto also knows his way around the genre, having lensed Brokeback Mountain for Ang Lee and The Homesman for Tommy Lee Jones. Here, he largely lets the dusty vistas speak for themselves, creating a vast, empty canvas that reminds us just how cut off from the outside world this place is. The Osage are on their own in their fight against the white interlopers.
Special mention should be made of the burning field sequence, which is destined to be played forever when people talk about the best cinematography of the 21st century. It is instantly iconographic, turning the subtext of the film into explicit text. The devil has come to the Osage nation, and he has brought the flames of hell with him. Masterful stuff.
Maestro
I love cinematographer Matthew Libatique, and his collaborations with Darren Aronofsky over the years have been some of the most interesting, innovative work of the modern era. From Pi to Requiem for a Dream to his nominated work on Black Swan, Libatique has been at the forefront of pushing the artform forward. All that said, I think the photography on Maestro is a little gauzy and overwrought. It’s actually a perfect match for the film Bradley Cooper is making, so I don’t lay the blame at the feet of Libatique. I just think it’s a tonally strange movie overall, and the photography reflects that strangeness.
Oppenheimer
Hoyte van Hoytema is not the most prolific cinematographer around, working on just seven feature films in the past 10 years. But, what he lacks in quantity, he more than makes up for in quality. Here are those seven films: Interstellar, SPECTRE, Dunkirk, Ad Astra, Tenet, Nope, and Oppenheimer. Now, these movies are, themselves, of quite varying merit, but one thing that can be said for all of them is that they are absolutely amazing to look at.
If you take one thing away from all of that – including four collaborations with Christopher Nolan – it should be that van Hoytema is our reigning king of IMAX. There is no cinematographer working today who makes better use of the giant format than van Hoytema, and Oppenheimer may be his crowning achievement … so far. His only previous nomination came for Nolan’s Dunkirk, but if he continues on his current path, it is almost certain this second nomination will not be his last.
Poor Things
I’ve never sat down to make a definitive list of the best photographed films of the 21st century. Surely, there would be a few mentions of Emmanuel Lubezki. A couple of the other folks in this group would be on that list. Roger Deakins, of course. But, the one that is perhaps unique to me (or, at least, semi-unique; it was nominated after all) is The Favourite by Robbie Ryan for Yorgos Lanthimos. I think every element of the photography on that film is just about perfect and nearly without equal.
So, of course, this reteam had me positively thrilled. It does not disappoint. Ryan employs many of the same techniques he and Lanthimos innovated on that previous film, but here, they are expanded and altered to match the tone and themes of the story. We get less of that famous fisheye lens as Bella’s (Emma Stone) world opens up, at which point Ryan allows the visual language of the film to open up, as well.
Ryan walks a fine line in that there is not a frame out of place, but despite that precision, the images feel consistently vibrant and alive. I hope these two make a dozen more films together. They’re already hard at work on their next collaboration, Kinds of Kindness, which hopefully will be released this year.
The final analysis
It’s been a great year for cinematography, and just about any of these would make a fine winner. My preference would be either Lachman for El Conde or Ryan for Poor Things, but Prieto and van Hoytema are highly deserving, as well. Frankly, there isn’t any part of me that wouldn’t love to see Libatique holding an Oscar statue, too, even if Maestro didn’t really work for me.
This is one of the places on the ballot where the Oppenheimer momentum is likely to carry a lot of weight. All things being equal – meaning with many equally excellent choices before them – voters will probably pencil in the presumptive Best Picture winner. Van Hoytema is a wonderful winner here. I just got the Oppenheimer 4k disc, and let me tell you: Whether on a 65-foot screen or a 65-inch screen, the movie looks incredible.
Will win: Oppenheimer
Should win: El Conde
Should have been here: Saltburn
A note about my favorite snub: The critics unaccountably abandoned this movie, and the American industry never really embraced it – though it was popular enough in the UK to pick up a couple BAFTA nominations. It’s a shame because they’re missing out on one of the truly remarkable films of the year, and one of its greatest virtues is Linus Sandgren’s stunning cinematography. Every shot is a painting, brilliantly conceived and executed by Sandgren and director Emerald Fennell. The Academy missed the boat on this one.
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