Beautiful Light

I don't think it's really fair to talk about "beautiful light" as a standard that I hold across the board. For me, it's more about the marriage of the style and the content of the story that creates something beautiful. Sometimes that can be a more traditionally "beautiful" sometimes it's pretty darn ugly "Winter's Bone". So I'll just move through some movies that I've seen lately where the cinematography and story seemed all of one piece.





"Days of Heaven" - Directed by Terrence Malick, cinematography by Nestor Almendros

The whole movie is pretty much a moving painting. It's a powerhouse of composition and beautiful natural light that feels completely at home in story of time and place. If you've never seen, netflix it. It's amazing.






"Where the Wild Things Are" - Directed by Spike Jonze, cinematography by Lance Acord

Okay, must people were really let down by this movie, but I loved it. It's an unusual movie that wasn't the happy childhood adventure that most people thought it would be. It works pretty much exclusively on an emotional level. The visuals are a huge part of that. The images are at times as sparse and simple as the plot and at others, they're soaked with as much melancholy sadness as the frustrated monsters who inhabit them. The ending with Carol walking into the water is heartbreaking.

"Winter's Bone" - Directed by Debra Granik, cinematography by Michael McDonough

It's hard to find an "beautiful" images from this movie, but the cinematography is so affecting and complimentary that it elevated the movie higher in my book. I have a lot of respect for movies like this and "The Wrestler" that really commit to the truth of the story. The movie takes place the meth-ravaged, Ozarks. It's an ugly place filled with a lot of ugly characters, and the cinematography never makes an attempts to hide that. I told someone after the movie that I didn't really know whether I "liked" the movie (I thought it was great, but it's so bleak that it's hard to "like") and I told them I didn't know. But I did say that anytime a movie feels so real that you feel like you can smell it and touch it, that's a pretty big feat. It's definitely the case here, thanks in part to the excellent cinematography to compliment the great writing, directing, and casting.

"Persona" - Directed by Ingmar Bergman, cinematography by Sven Nkvist.
I had a lot of  fun shooting in black and white on Hamilton's project. It's really a different approach. The challenge is in creating contrast between the tones, whereas in color you can get your separation through color. I really love this still for it's intensity in the contrasted foreground against the extremely flat background.








"Punch-Drunk Love" - Directed by PT Anderson, cinematography by Robert Elswitt
The color palette is such an important part of the beauty and meaning in the film





"Jarhead" - Directed by Sam Mendez. Really beautiful contrast and handheld camera work throughout.



"The Man Who Wasn't There"



"A Serious Man" - Directed by the Coen Brothers. This movie is full of the kind of some really great understated cinematography. 



"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" - Directed by Andrew Dominik





Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, bad-ass

I'm going to give Roger his own section of the post. He's also sure to reappear in my upcoming favorite cinematographer post. His name alone is enough to get me to watch a movie, and it doesn't hurt that he's the Coen Brother's go-to cinematographer.