OVP: Best Cinematography (2005)
The Nominees Were...
Wally Pfister, Batman Begins
Rodrigo Prieto, Brokeback Mountain
Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck
Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha
Emmanuel Lubezki, The New World
Rodrigo Prieto, Brokeback Mountain
Robert Elswit, Good Night, and Good Luck
Dion Beebe, Memoirs of a Geisha
Emmanuel Lubezki, The New World
My Thoughts: And...now we're caught up. We've been doing back-to-back-to-back articles on the OVP to be keeping to our weekly quota of two OVP Ballots, and we're back to our Monday-and-Wednesday routine (for the time being-my main goal is two a week, the days are more a "nice to have") with Cinematography. This is my favorite of the visual categories, both because it's why I love the movies (I love pretty pictures) and because it's the branch with the best taste. 2005 is no disappointment-it's one of the better lineups we've encountered so far.
I just finished writing the Costume Design article, so I'll stay on the same mood with Memoirs of a Geisha. While the costume work was a high point for me, I fall back down to earth with this movie, and have to admit right now-I don't really like the work of Dion Beebe. He's not distinctive enough for my tastes, and as a result he needs a director who has a very unique vision for the film; his best work comes from directors who come armed with a distinctive style like Jane Campion or Michael Mann. Here, with Rob Marshall, it feels bleak and dark. There's too little light in Memoirs, and there are sequences where the film has invested so much money into gorgeous sets & costumes, and you can't even see it. This is a problem with all of Beebe's early work with Rob Marshall-there's not enough vision in what they're bringing to the screen.
It all goes up from there, though. Many of these filmmakers are regulars with these directors, perhaps most famously Wally Pfister & his constant collaborations with Christopher Nolan. Batman Begins has the opportunity to do something similar to Beebe-paint the film's many elaborate costumes & sets with darkness to create mood, but they don't do that. In fact, arguably some of the best elements of Batman Begins happen when they are painting the screen with light-think of the snow-covered scenes where a bright sun is shielded by a blanket of clouds, or of course Bruce Wayne staring up at the bottom of a well. Combined with great action sequences, you get a strong start to Nolan's trilogy.
The other famed pairing here is Malick & Lubezki, with this being their first outing (John Toll did The Thin Red Line), and there's a reason Lubezki was asked to stick around. The film is lush and gorgeous, a meditation on the life of Pocahontas, but also one that feels regally beautiful. The trick here, making it possibly their best outing (give-or-take The Tree of Life) is the way the cinematography makes it feel like you're actually in the early 17th Century. Everything feels so fresh and new-I've never seen a movie so well-employ its cinematography to instill a sense of period in what we're seeing onscreen.
But The New World isn't the only one playing for the all-timers club-Brokeback Mountain is doing that too. The movie starts out with iconic shots, watching two men secretly (except to the peering eye of the camera) check each other out, and it doesn't let go. This movie also finds a way to instill period into what we're seeing, but it's more about finding a vision into these two men's worlds. The camera makes their reunion kiss feel so claustrophobic, as if we can understand the limited space they're inhabiting (and how they always feel cramped by the camera, who knows they can't get further than where we are at). The movie does a terrific job of dealing with wide-and-long shots combined with deep closeups, and it crafts a motif for the film.
Which leaves us with Good Night, and Good Luck, another worthy nomination. Obviously the movie is in black-and-white (a trope the Academy crushes on hard even when it doesn't deserve it), but Good Night is more than just a throwback. It also invites a sort of sophisticated elegance to the black-and-white, feeling almost like you're watching a radio show or how you're about to go out to dinner. I saw this again on the big screen last year, and was shocked how it felt like a mood, a casual, jazzy theme, that's impossible to pinpoint but the camera is guiding that feeling. For a movie that's a biopic, perhaps the most traditional of film genres, it plays so much with form it occasionally goes into poetry with its long segways into night clubs & restaurants. I love the cinematography here, and it's the rare modern black-and-white movie that needs that coloring choice in order to create what the director is attempting to achieve.
I just finished writing the Costume Design article, so I'll stay on the same mood with Memoirs of a Geisha. While the costume work was a high point for me, I fall back down to earth with this movie, and have to admit right now-I don't really like the work of Dion Beebe. He's not distinctive enough for my tastes, and as a result he needs a director who has a very unique vision for the film; his best work comes from directors who come armed with a distinctive style like Jane Campion or Michael Mann. Here, with Rob Marshall, it feels bleak and dark. There's too little light in Memoirs, and there are sequences where the film has invested so much money into gorgeous sets & costumes, and you can't even see it. This is a problem with all of Beebe's early work with Rob Marshall-there's not enough vision in what they're bringing to the screen.
It all goes up from there, though. Many of these filmmakers are regulars with these directors, perhaps most famously Wally Pfister & his constant collaborations with Christopher Nolan. Batman Begins has the opportunity to do something similar to Beebe-paint the film's many elaborate costumes & sets with darkness to create mood, but they don't do that. In fact, arguably some of the best elements of Batman Begins happen when they are painting the screen with light-think of the snow-covered scenes where a bright sun is shielded by a blanket of clouds, or of course Bruce Wayne staring up at the bottom of a well. Combined with great action sequences, you get a strong start to Nolan's trilogy.
The other famed pairing here is Malick & Lubezki, with this being their first outing (John Toll did The Thin Red Line), and there's a reason Lubezki was asked to stick around. The film is lush and gorgeous, a meditation on the life of Pocahontas, but also one that feels regally beautiful. The trick here, making it possibly their best outing (give-or-take The Tree of Life) is the way the cinematography makes it feel like you're actually in the early 17th Century. Everything feels so fresh and new-I've never seen a movie so well-employ its cinematography to instill a sense of period in what we're seeing onscreen.
But The New World isn't the only one playing for the all-timers club-Brokeback Mountain is doing that too. The movie starts out with iconic shots, watching two men secretly (except to the peering eye of the camera) check each other out, and it doesn't let go. This movie also finds a way to instill period into what we're seeing, but it's more about finding a vision into these two men's worlds. The camera makes their reunion kiss feel so claustrophobic, as if we can understand the limited space they're inhabiting (and how they always feel cramped by the camera, who knows they can't get further than where we are at). The movie does a terrific job of dealing with wide-and-long shots combined with deep closeups, and it crafts a motif for the film.
Which leaves us with Good Night, and Good Luck, another worthy nomination. Obviously the movie is in black-and-white (a trope the Academy crushes on hard even when it doesn't deserve it), but Good Night is more than just a throwback. It also invites a sort of sophisticated elegance to the black-and-white, feeling almost like you're watching a radio show or how you're about to go out to dinner. I saw this again on the big screen last year, and was shocked how it felt like a mood, a casual, jazzy theme, that's impossible to pinpoint but the camera is guiding that feeling. For a movie that's a biopic, perhaps the most traditional of film genres, it plays so much with form it occasionally goes into poetry with its long segways into night clubs & restaurants. I love the cinematography here, and it's the rare modern black-and-white movie that needs that coloring choice in order to create what the director is attempting to achieve.
Other Precursor Contenders: The American Society of Cinematographers went nearly with the same lineup as Oscar, favoring Geisha and substituting out The New World for King Kong. The BAFTA Awards only kept Geisha (also their winner) and Brokeback, instead keeping in Constant Gardener (solid), March of the Penguins (sure), and Crash (are you f@#%ing kidding me). In order for me to be able to sleep at night, I'm going to pretend that sixth place was King Kong or Munich (Janusz Kaminski frequently gets into this category), because the idea that The New World might have gotten bumped for Crash is too nightmarish to ponder.
Films I Would Have Nominated: Like I said, there's nothing wrong with this list-some solid options to contend with in this lineup. I would've, however, thrown two new movies onto this to up the ante. First would be Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which is gorgeous, and Roger Pratt does night scenes better than any film we've name-checked today. I also would have put in Cache, not only because it plays with light in a variety of ways that heighten the chill of the movie, but also because it does such a good job playing with the idea of a stationery camera (and intersecting that into specific scenes in the movie where there "is not stationery camera") that I would be remiss if I didn't include it in this lineup.
Oscar's Choice: Beebe, three years after his surprise miss for Chicago (they instead honored the late Conrad Hall), got a belated Oscar, likely at the expense of Rodrigo Prieto.
Oscar's Choice: Beebe, three years after his surprise miss for Chicago (they instead honored the late Conrad Hall), got a belated Oscar, likely at the expense of Rodrigo Prieto.
My Choice: So many good options here, including a movie in my Top 10 All-Time list, but I'm going to break it to you now-Brokeback Mountain will not be sweeping the 2005 OVP (even if it will definitely be winning a lot of other trophies as we go further into the categories)-this trophy has to go to The New World, a towering achievement of cinematography. In third is Good Night, followed by Batman and Geisha.
Those are my thoughts-how about yours? I feel like this is not gonna be many people 15 years later, but does anyone want to stand up for Memoirs of a Geisha winning this category? Who do you pick between two legendary pieces of work in The New World and Brokeback Mountain? And can you imagine how ugly this could've gotten if I'd had to profile Crash? Share your thoughts below!
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