The legendary Roger Deakins has delivered distinctive, mouth-watering, world-class cinematography on so many great films it’s almost tiring to review them all. All of those Coen brothers films alone…Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Intolerable Cruelty, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, True Grit and the forthcoming Hail, Caesar!. Not to mention The Shawshank Redemption, Kundun, A Beautiful Mind, In the Valley of Elah, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford…the list goes on and on.
Deakins is in the pantheon with Emmanuel Lubezki, Robert Richardson, Wally Pfister, Jeff Cronenweth, Matty Libatique, Dante Spinotti and…I don’t know, you tell me.
Currently on the plate is Denis Villeneuve‘s Sicario, which Deakins shot the hell out of in his usual striking way. Hot blasts of Texan-Mexican sun, noirish atmosphere, serious malevolence. Good hands, good eye, enormous assurance.
I spoke to Deakins around 10 am this morning inside West Hollywood’s London hotel. The primary idea was to discuss Sicario but also to afford myself and others a chance to remind everyone that this brilliant resident of Santa Monica — British, lanky, white-haired, laid back — has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography twelve fucking times, and that it’s time to finally give him the trophy already.
Okay, Deakins might lose again (if he’s nominated, that is, for his work on Sicario) to Emmanuel Lubezki’s lensing of The Revenant, but he has to win sooner or later, right?
Deakins has been Oscar-nominated for his work on The Shawshank Redemption (’94), Fargo (’96), Kundun (’97), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (’00), The Man Who Wasn’t There (’01), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (’07), No Country for Old Men (’07), The Reader (’08) True Grit (’10), Skyfall (’12), Prisoners (’13) and Unbroken (’14).
We spoke a bit about Hail Ceasar! and especially the forthcoming Blade Runner remake, which Deakins was cagey about.
Again, the mp3.
