For years, Deakins’ eye one of keenest in movies
Cinematographer tries to find bit of humor in projects
The first photograph Roger Deakins ever took, in 1969 Bournemouth, England, shows a man and a woman quietly eating lunch on a bench outside a ladies room. A sign reads: “Keep it to yourself.”
Deakins has taken countless images since that first snap. He has photographed “Fargo,” “Kundun” and “The Assassination of
Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.” He shot “No Country for Old Men,”
“The Man Who Wasn’t There” and “Skyfall.” He has been nominated for 15 Oscars and won two. He has been knighted.
But if given the chance, he’d take that first blackand-white shot exactly the same way.
“I would take the same photograph now with the same situation, the same frame, the same lens,” Deakins says, chuckling. “I don’t think my eye has changed much at all.”
For decades, Deakins’ eye has been one of the keenest in movies. It’s not easy to pinpoint what makes a film’s cinematography identifiably Deakins’ work, and yet it’s obvious. Something about how seamlessly the images connect. A sometimes wry perspective. “I try to find a bit of humor,” he said in a recent interview.
Deakins’ latest is Sam Mendes’ “Empire of Light,” starring Olivia Colman and Michael Ward as workers at a 1980s shoreline cinema in the south of England. The film, now in theaters, returns Deakins to the coastal setting that he knew growing up in the English county of Devon and that deeply influenced him as a cinematographer and occasional still photographer. Deakins recently published some of his early photos in the collection “Byways.”
In addition, Deakins
and his wife and collaborator, James Ellis Deakins, maintain one of the most essential podcasts on moviemaking. In each episode of “Team Deakins,” they interview craftspeople, offering a window into the behind-the-scenes arts of filmmaking.
Roger Deakins, a widely revered master of the form, has built an empire of light of his own.
“When people come up to you and gush over your career and stuff, there are moments like that where you go, ‘I suppose I have done a lot,’ ” Deakins says. “But I don’t really think about it. You just go from project to project, year to year, and just see how things go. That’s how I live my life, really.”
This interview with Deakins has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Cinematography is a hard-to-define art sometimes compared to painting or described as a grammar. To you, cinematography is ... A:
A visual interpretation of a story. To aid the director in a visual interpretation of a story, really. Filmmaking is a collaborative process. Where does directing end and cinematography begin? Where does production design begin and end? Wardrobe, costume, acting. The lines change depending on the combination of characters involved.
It’s what’s always been so interesting, really, about doing movies. It can even change project to project with the same people.
Q: Is the solitary nature of still photography part of its appeal to you?
A:
It is, frankly. I find working on movies as a
cinematographer really stressful. And it doesn’t get any less stressful the more experience I get, which is strange, really. I find more and more just wandering around with a still camera a great relaxation, really, because I don’t have any great pressure but my own pressure, I suppose.
Q: There are images in “Byways” not so distant from some of the coastal scenes of “Empire of Light.” A:
Well, yeah. I grew up in Torquay, and we have a place in Devon. I’ve lived by the coast all my life. We mainly live in LA, but in Santa Monica, so we’re only a few blocks from the beach. I don’t think I could live far from the ocean. I find it hard shooting in New Mexico or something for four months. Where’s the sea? I like that sense of
the beyond, I suppose.
Q: You’ve said you wished you could have made a film with John Huston (“The Maltese Falcon”). Is there a style of moviemaking that doesn’t exist anymore that you wish you could have been a part of?
A:
I do see films moving in a direction of everything’s got to be so naturalistic and softly lit. I used to love film noir and black-and-white cinematography, especially people like James Wong Howe or Ossie Morris, their use of light. I think that’s kind of changed. There’s not that stylization, and I think there’s a place for that. Of course, there’s a place for total naturalism. And I should talk because I do quite a lot of naturalism. But I think we are losing that whole range of ways of creating a world through
cinema.
Q: “Empire of Light” seems to be participating in a dialogue about movies’ shifting place in culture. Do you ever fear for the future of the medium?
A:
I have for a while. My heroes when I was starting out, when I was a teenager and first turned on to movies, were Jean-Pierre Melville and (Andrei) Tarkovsky and Peter Watkins. They’re people that were telling stories in different ways. They weren’t linear narratives. It wasn’t a series of talking heads. Especially with Tarkovsky, there’s a structure to his movies that is a kind of visual poetry. But it’s more than poetry because it’s visuals, and it’s sounds, and it’s a whole bunch of things. I can’t talk about it, but it leaves me emotionally drained watching “Stalker.” You can’t put your finger on it, and that, to me, is real film. (Michelangelo) Antonioni could do it, and (Luchino) Visconti did it. I don’t see much of that now. I see a lot of talking heads and linear narrative storytelling and, frankly, it bores the hell out of me.
Q: You’ve been thinking this way for a while?
A:
I’ve been very lucky. Some of the films I’ve done like “The Assassination of Jesse James” with Andrew Dominik or “Kundun” with Martin Scorsese. There’s something about those movies that’s more than just a story. They’re attempting to do something that’s pure cinema. I don’t see so much of that. The films that are being made, some of them are great. But I don’t see that range.
Q: Why do you think that shift happened?
A:
I don’t know. There’s also the kind of action films as well. It’s becoming a very narrow vision. I don’t know. Maybe because it’s easy. It guaranteed they’re going to make money on those kind of films. But I don’t see producers and studios taking chances now so much.