There are two of them that matter most to me, I think -- and not in the Best Picture category. ("The King's Speech" over "The Social Network"? Really? I can only shrug. Forget it, Jim -- it's the Academy...) I'm much more interested in seeing Roger Deakins and Skip Lievsay get their due recognition. DP Deakins, unquestionably one of the handful of great cinematographers working today, is nominated for "True Grit" -- his ninth nomination in 16 years, and he has yet to win. How can this be? For the record, here are the films for which he has been nominated by the Academy: "The Shawshank Redemption," "Fargo," "Kundun," "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," "The Man Who Wasn't There" (black-and-white widescreen, my favorite format), "No Country for Old Men" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (both in the same year!), "The Reader" (co-nominated with the also-great Chris Menges, who should have won for "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada") and now, "True Grit." (What? No nomination for "A Serious Man"?!?!) He also photographed "Sid & Nancy," "Stormy Monday," "Mountains of the Moon," "Homicide," "Barton Fink," "The Secret Garden," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "Dead Man Walking" and "The Big Lebowski," among many others.
Watch the impressive featurette/interview above for a few examples of Deakins' brilliance (and, for once, that term is actually intended to refer to the intensity of light!).
The Carpetbagger has a short interview with Deakins today, too (which contains spoilers, although this excerpt does not):
A. [For a climactic scene] We shot this wide shot of the horse falling down. I picked his location of a rocky plain with a bluff in the background. Lit up at night, it looked quite threatening. And we talked about it, and Joel said, it's too interesting. There's too much happening in it. And he said, wouldn't it be more interesting if it were this horse in this empty plain of nothing? And it is, it works much better than the original shot would've worked.
Q. When I spoke to Carter Burwell, the composer for "True Grit," he said when a film's score really works, even a composer might not notice it. Is that true for good cinematography as well?
A. Absolutely. It's too easy to make ostentatious kind of shots, that at first viewing, are like, oh, that's great, but they don't help the story, they don't help the audience get immersed in the story. [In "True Grit"] there's certain things you think, I felt happy at the end of the day, something might've been a particular challenge, but in terms of the final image, I hope nothing does stand out. I hope everything is, in that sense, equivalent and works with the story.
Q. What were the challenging scenes?A. Reading the script, one thing that gave me nightmares was, how do you track with a horse galloping at night across an open plane, and if that horse is jet black, how do you see it? We built a road that was 1500 feet long, in a forest, so we could track alongside this horse, and used a kind of electric golf cart, and then we have a little crane arm and a gyro-stabilizing head, that sets away from the car, so you could keep the camera on the horse's head. The trainer, there was just a rider who knew the horse, the rider just put on Jeff's costume [Jeff Bridges who plays Rooster Cogburn]. And apart from that, you just need a very big light a long way away.
As for Skip Lievsay, the sound designer (editor, mixer, etc.) whose name in the credits signifies additional dimensions to a film that 3D can't begin to approximate, I wrote about him when he received his first pair of nominations (shared with a team) for "No Country for Old Men." Unbelievably, he didn't win. Now he's nominated twice more, for sound editing and sound mixing, for "True Grit."
Remember this? Mattie and Rooster are perched up in the hills, waiting for Lucky Ned Pepper and his men to show up.. A man on a horse comes riding up the trail below. It's dark and he's too far away to get a good look at, but the moment he dismounts we know who it is. How? A faint jingling of spurs. Lievsay has brought that kind of wit and imagination to sound design for many years. (In recent years he has concentrated on dialog while co-nominee Craig Berkey focuses on sound effects.)
He started as a sound editor on John Waters' "Polyester" in 1981 and went on to work with the Coens ("Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona," "Miller's Crossing," "Barton Fink" -- the mosquito! the wallpaper glue! -- and so on), Martin Scorsese ("After Hours," "The Color of Money," "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Goodfellas," "Casino," and more), Spike Lee ("Do the Right Thing," "Mo' Better Blues," "Malcolm X," "Clockers") -- and too many others to mention. (That list only takes you up to the mid-1990s, but I first learned to keep an eye out for him in the latter part of the 1980s.)
I don't know how many people realize what sound design is, but here's a terrific quotation from Lievsay I found on his IMDb page:
"The essence of sound design is you can't record the sound. You have to take a lot of sounds and put them together. You can't just go somewhere with a shotgun and a silencer."
In other words, most of what you hear in a movie wasn't recorded on location. It's been created and layered into the picture during post-production.
(tip: Tim Appelo, via Richard T. Jameson)
36 Comments
True Grit was a beautiful movie to watch thanks to Roger Deakin's cinematography. I would love to see him finally get the Oscar he deserves.
Deakins is phenomenal, but I don't think anything from this year topped Robert Richardson's work on Shutter Island, nor did anything last year top Robert Richardson's work on Inglourious Basterds.
If Deakins wins this year I think it will be because of his work and not because he was carried along by a Best Picture sweep, the way I think some cinematographers have won in the past (Slumdog Millionaire, Titanic, Braveheart). For this reason I'm glad he's winning (assuming he's winning) for a Coen movie and not something like The Reader.
I'm a fan of Deakins but I think sometimes his work calls too much attention to itself, to the point where it detracts from, rather than services or enhances, the story being told.
That said, it's fairly ridiculous that he hasn't won an Oscar yet. And you're right- no nomination for "A Serious Man" is a real head-scratcher (and in a year that a CGI movie won!).
I've heard that argument lobbed against Janusz Kaminski, but never Deakins until now. I guess I can kinda see that point in regards to The Assassination of Jesse James blah blah blah because I didn't think the film on the whole lived up to the work done by Deakins, Pitt, and Afflec. Then again, I guess that's more of a criticism of the film rather than Deakins. I'm on the side of thinking his work is understated mostly because he doesn't do a lot of elaborate camera movements that remind you of the camera's presence. I've never counted shots, but it seems like his camera is more often still than moving. Then again, I primarily think of him as the Coen's cinematographer so I probably have a bias where I think of him in comparison to Barry Sonnenfeld rather than the field on the whole. Are there any specific moments that come to mind that have made you think of Deakins work as calling too much attention to itself? (I ask in earnestness; I'm curious to "see with your eyes.")
I remember thinking Revolutionary Road looked kind of shellacked, but I don't know if that's a cinematography/lighting thing or an art direction thing, or a combination of both.
I'm thinking primarily of his work in Coen Brothers comedies: O Brother, Hudsucker, Intolerable Cruelty, Lebowski, and especially The Ladykillers. He puts quite a few visual jokes in there, which are admittedly clever, but ultimately distracting. And to me, comedy works by putting offbeat or unusual characters into the ordinary world (or vice versa), and his camerawork throws those offbeat characters into an offbeat world, which is not nearly as amusing or engaging to me.
I'm not sure whether or not "A Serious Man" qualifies as a comedy, but the reason Deakins' photography works for me in that one is because the protagonist is so normal. The other Coens comedies fail for me because they star Coens characters in a Coens movie (with Deakins providing too-obvious signifiers of this), while "A Serious Man" works because it features an ordinary guy who wakes up one day to find himself in a Coen Brothers movie.
Outside of Coens comedies, Deakins work isn't too distracting (I'd argue that The Village could have been better serviced by a visual approach that wasn't so bold and vibrant, but the premise was so wobbly that maybe it was a lost cause).
Got it, and I can see your point. As I alluded to in my initial response, I have similar feelings in regard to Barry Sonnenfeld's work with the Coens. That's not to say I dislike what Sonnenfeld did (although it's hard to know who is ultimately responsible during such collaboration) so much as I've appreciated Deakins' work with the Coens much more. That is partly because Deakins isn't as showy as Sonnenfeld.
I have to say I'm very confused. Apart from the obvious differences between the individual Coen movies - and I would say every movie does its own thing to some extent - I don't see much difference in their style pre or post Barton Fink. I can only think: richer colours in the Deakins films and perhaps more landscape shots with greater depth. Also, I don't remember them using a rapid push-in on a character's face in anything since Miller's Crossing, but was that a Sonnenfeld shot or a Coen Brothers shot? What can we attribute to the DP, and what to the Brothers' evolution of/experimentation with their style?
What do you mean, Bob K, when you say Deakins fills his shots with distracting visual jokes? Your criticism sounds more applicable to the Coens' choices than to Deakins'. And what do you mean, haggie, when you say Sonnenfeld's work was more showy? I'm not saying either of you are wrong, I'm just saying I'm confused.
Some specific differences between the two are that Sonnenfeld did a lot more shots involving the z-axis such as follow shots or of objects moving into deeper space. Part of what makes it more "showy" is in the editing where the Coens, in their films with Sonnenfeld, would often use two of these shots together. The first might be of the camera tracking backwards while a character moved toward it with a cut then to the reverse where the camera is still and the character is shot from behind but is now moving deeper into the scene space. It's the juxtaposition of shots that draws attention to it as a style. Consider how this plays out in Miller's Crossing with the follow shots on Tom (storming into the bar), Leo (with a Tommy gun), and the hat (blowing away). In Raising Arizona, recall the sequence where H.I. is being chased down the street and through the yards (and the sudden cut to the dog snapping at his face). For the most obvious example of the camera drawing attention to itself (in this case as a joke about the camera's presence) look at the camera hopping over the drunk in Blood Simple.
Now, of course Roger Deakins shot The Hudsucker Proxy in largely the same way as the Sonnenfeld films, but I think that Barton Fink is far more "tame" than the Sonnenfeld-shot films and that most of the films from Fargo on have a different aesthetic to them that is more easily identified as Deakins. Lots more still camera shots, shots that would be still if not for the camera's very slow tracking, and a lot more overhead (directly overhead or somewhere around 45 degrees) shots especially for establishing a new location or before cutting away from a sequence.
Now, this is just a very short and simple assessment because I'm going off of memory and haven't studied their work as intently as I'd like if I was really tackling writing about it (especially in regards to lighting). But as a broad generalization, I'd say that you can see a continuation of each DP's style outside of the Coen films. I don't recall specifics, but I remember watching Men in Black and quickly recognizing that it looked like it was shot by the Coen's DP (this was before I knew Sonnenfeld by name). I did know that Deakins shot The Assassination blah blah blah before seeing it, but using more shorthand hyperbole instead of evidence, the film just looks like Deakins shot it. The camerawork in those two films couldn't be any more different. Wish I could give more specifics, but that'd require more time and research than I have at this exact moment.
It's easy to argue that the style I describe of the Sonnefeld years comes from editing as much as it does cinematography (and I would agree). It's hard to know who was responsible for what in the films, but to me it's as if there are two Coen eras and they coincide with the two DPs. The fact that Barton Fink and Hudsucker Proxy seem to have a bit of the style of both DPs leads me to believe that the difference in eras might have more to do with the evolving style of the Coens. No matter who was responsible, I find the earlier Coen films to be much more "showy" in terms of camera work. I don't mean to imply that that's a bad thing--not at all--just that it's different than most of what they've done since hiring Deakins.
Thanks Haggie, now I have to watch every Coen movie again.
I've always thought 'Miller's Crossing' and 'Raising Arizona' both look a bit TV-movie when compared to the ones that Deakins shot.
As a general rule, the Cohen Brothers are not funny.
Great "serious" movies, though: "Blood Simple," "No Country for Old Men," "Barton Fink" (not a comedy to me)....
The Cinematography award seems to be hit-and-miss. I'm immediately reminded of Emmanuel Lubezki losing two years in a row for The New World and Children of Men. I'm disappointed to see that Deakins has never won, but not altogether surprised. I'm glad to see Matthew Libatique get a nomination this year. He and Aronofsky are a great team.
Thank you for this post.
In my film writings, lectures and critiques, I frequently talk about cinematography, sound design (or lack of) and the music score.
Even among fellow film critics who should know better, I am told that those things are boring and if I hear one more person wax rhapsodic about a director or an actor, I will probably go nuts.
If the auteur theory has a big downside, it’s that it gives directors way TOO much credit for films and not enough to the many others who work on films (especially the writers, but then, I'm biased towards writers).
Another telling sound cue in True Grit was subtle noise Matt Damon makes when he prepares and smokes his pipe. That revealed his presence in several scenes.
Roger Deakins is a god as far as I am concerned. Ever since I saw Sid & Nancy and the shot of Sid and Nancy kissing by the dumpster while the trash falls around them in slow motion. . .WOW! Talk about a romantic moment and disturbingly sexy to boot.
Yeah I especially loved how the Brothers Coen did a lot of the exact same shots used in the original movie then pretended that they had not seen the movie since their childhood.
The Acadamy's failure to award Deakins is either shameful, based on ignorance, or both. Of course, I also believe that costume designer Mary Zophres is even more shamefully overlooked. Her nomination for True Grit is her first ever Acadamy Award nom. Unbelievable. At the very least, she should have won an Oscar for A Serious Man (how Deakins and "Roderick Jaynes" weren't awarded for that film as well is beyond me).
Conrad Hall didn't win a cinematography Oscar until 1969's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Prior to that, he shot Hell in the Pacific, In Cold Blood, and Cool Hand Luke (not the mention those films that I haven't actually seen). After his win in '69, Hall didn't win again until 1999 for American Beauty. He posthemusley won in 2002 for his work on Road to Perdition. I'm glad he picked up three in his career, but even that seems like a slight to me.
The title says it all. Thanks, Jim.
This reminds me of something I'd been meaning to ask you. Did you win a screenwriting Oscar for It's Pat? I heard a rumor that you did and just wanted to clarify. Then you retired from screenwriting immediately. You're like Rocky Marciano, or John Cazale.
You were misinformed. I and my "It's Pat" co-writers won the Nobel Prize in Physics for our screenplay.
You mean you and Quentin Tarantino for his uncredited rewrite.
The cinematography award often goes to the "best picture postcard vistas in an audience-friendly movie." So, for once, Deakins has done a great job in the exactly the right kind of picture.
And after we get Oscars for Deakins and Lievsay, can we at least get a freaking NOMINATION for Carter Burwell? Or even get his work declared eligible?
Gotta agree with Warren Oates' sentiment. Sadly the folks voting for the winner seldom understands just what cinematography or sound effects editing actually entails. This was made patently clear after last year's travesty, where Avatar's "DP" won the Oscar for cinematography despite having only worked on the 30 percent of the picture which was live action, with the remainder representing the work of dozens of technicians, including a battery of "lighting technical directors." I'm not saying the film was unworthy of the cinematography award, as it was very innovative cinematography, but the wrong person was nominated and given the award. It should've gone to the whole team.
And as Warren points out, most often it goes to the film with the MOST cinematography, that is, the film that is most self consciously reaching, that cries "Look at how pretty this film is. We shot at magic hour!"
The same goes for sound categories. The overarching tendency is not recognize the best SFX, but the MOST SFX. War pictures, action, adventure. There is no room for subtlety hear. Here are the winners in the past decade:
The Hurt Locker
The Dark Knight
The Bourne Ultimatum
Letters From Iwo Jima
King Kong
The Incredibles
Master and Commander
Lord of the Rings
Pearl Harbor
U-571
See a pattern? Frankly, I rather hate some of these categories. Thanks to technical categories like this one, we must forever inhabit a world where Pearl Fucking Harbor has an Oscar.
Yeesh.
I'd have liked to see Scott Pilgrim get nominations in the sound categories (James Boyle, sound designer, James Harrison, sound effects editor, Julian Slater, supervising sound editor). A lot of very careful work on that film.
It would be nice to see Deakins get an Oscar, after all the good films he's lit and shot.
Deakins hasn't won...whaaaa?
As someone who found little value in True Grit, I won't revisit those objections here. But, is it not a greater sin to award a sympathy Oscar for lesser work as a consolation for overlooking one's more esteemed efforts? Scorsese for The Departed, anyone?
The Academy Awards often favor showy performance over the less visible ones, Victorian costumes over inconspicuous dress, national geographic cinematography over interiors. In a sense, it's a celebration of the obvious.
When Diablo Cody won best screenplay for Juno over Michael Clayton, I realized all hope for these awards was lost forever.
While I completely agree with the sentiment that "The Social Network" is more artistically alive than "The King's Speech," I don't quite understand the overwhelming indifference towards the latter (on this site). Don't get me wrong, it clearly falls into Oscar-bait territory just on the basis of the premise alone, but I can't help but feel a little puzzled that you didn't think it was "much of a movie" even though you appreciated the performances. I thought it was fairly solid as a film (in terms of framing, composition, cinematography, etc.); nothing stellar necessarily, but certainly not worthy of being dismissed entirely as a crowd-pleaser.
Even though I was more swept away by the cinematography in Black Swan, True Grit was undeniably beautifully shot. After seeing the list of movies the man has shot and been nominated for, I think he deserves a win! Then again, I am a supporter of not considering a career; rather the individual performance/job (Which is why Anette Bening should not win Best Actress this year.) Still, I would be happy either way, and judging by True Grit's ten nominations, it clearly has academy support.
From all the nominees this year, yeah, Deakins deserves it. But Shutter Island is still the best work photography this year. BY FAR.
I think Robert Richardson is slightly better than Deakins, but both are the best in film in cinematography. As for last year, The Hurt Locker was deserved it, or The White Ribbon.
Where is your "official" best of 2010 list?
The American Society of Cinematographers is giving Deakins a Lifetime Achievement Award:
http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/January2011/RogerDeakinsASCBSC/page1.php#
Nice collection of photos of Deakins at work included with the article.
Deakins' website is worth a look, too:
http://www.deakinsonline.com/
Of interest:
Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry talk about the film here: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/feb/08/talking-about-true-grit/
Deakins says he may never shoot film again. Wonder what the Coens will think.
http://www.slashfilm.com/roger-deakins-digital-35mm-im-ill-film/
Not to get off subject of Best Cinematography snubs but...
I'm still shaking my head over "Love Story" winning Best Score in 1970 over "Patton".
Happy to see Mountains of the Moon get a mention here. It's long been one of my largely-undiscovered treasures. The film it most closely resembles in every way is Lawrence of Arabia. Both are based on fascinating and controversial men: Richard Francis Burton (the subject of Mountains of the Moon) spoke close to fifty languages and dialects, translated The Arabian Nights, made the first translation of the Kama Sutra and The Perfumed Garden, explored four continents, was the first non-Muslim to enter Mecca in centuries (he did it by learning Arabic and the Koran so well he posed as a pilgrim and debated theology with imams along the way), ditto with another city whose name escapes me at the moment, was a spy in India, became a master of sword combat in both European and Asian styles, and was controversial because he largely respected other cultures, consistently "went native," and considered sexuality a legitimate field of inquiry. When people were arguing over who was right about the source of the Nile, him or his expedition partner John Hanning Speke, Burton acidly wrote that neither man could be considered to have "discovered" it because there were people living there. That is not a common 19th century attitude.
Incidentally, Speke was right, through blind luck. He was a hunter, not an explorer. Burton's main claim was that Speke didn't take accurate survey readings and therefore was making a hasty claim. But because Burton was Scotch-Irish and Speke was English and a member of the minor nobility, the establishment favored the latter's claim. The denouement of the film, only slightly compressed from real life, makes clear how Speke realized too late that he was being used.
The movie focuses only on the period in which the search for source of the Nile occurred, and specifically on the relationship between Burton (Patrick Bergin) and Speke (Iain Glen), as well as Burton's relationship (somewhat idealized from life) with the woman whom he eventually married (played by Fiona Shaw). The cinematography is indeed spectacular, and not just in the expected African vista scenes.
I can think of only two reasons why more people didn't see this film: 1) the loss of popularity of true epic films; 2) the title, which makes it sound like a cheesy science-fiction film.
After Avatar's win for cinematography last year, I've been wondering if it makes sense to have the entire Academy vote for the winners in all categories. I mean, editors nominate editors and art directors nominate art directors presumably because they are experts and their knowledge will ensure worthy and superlative candidates. (That is, of course, only the ideal; reality seldom matches up.)
So what if only editors could vote for editing, sound designers for sound mixing, etc.? Would that produce more sensible outcomes? Does Jake Gyllenhaal really know what a sound editor does?
Leave a comment