Last year, Roger Deakins won an Oscar for Blade Runner 2049. It was an extraordinary moment, not just because it was a well-deserved accolade, but because it was the first Academy Award for a cinematographer who had been previously nominated 13 times, for films including The Shawshank Redemption and Skyfall. “About time!” cried cineastes across the globe: the man is an icon in the industry and responsible for some of the finest cinematography of the past three decades.
But as Deakins himself has often said: if the audience doesn’t notice, you’ve done your job. Cinematography is not about being showy, it’s about telling a story and immersing us in the narrative, creating a tangible mood and haunting images. Think back to the emotional impact of The Reader, the suspense of No Country for Old Men or the comedy of O Brother, Where Art Thou? – Deakins had a hand in all that, and we can expect more with The Goldfinch.
Born in 1949, Roger Deakins grew up in Torquay, where he became a keen painter as a schoolboy. Studying graphic design in Bath, he developed his interest in photography. After graduating from the National Film and Television School, he travelled the world as a cameraperson on documentaries. Working in a vast variety of landscapes and conditions, he learned on the job, whether filming an around-the-world yacht race or conflict zones in Africa. He also worked on music videos with the band Madness, and the 1981 film Van Morrison in Ireland.
His first feature films were edgy British 80s fare, including Sid and Nancy, White Mischief, Personal Services and 1984, the adaptation of the eponymous George Orwell novel. A combination of natural ability, graft and a reputation for excellence led him to Hollywood, where he began working with writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen. Their fourth film, Barton Fink, was to be the first of many collaborations: he became their go-to director of photography and from there began collecting a swag of nominations and awards. Bafta nominated him for Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou? and he won for The Man Who Wasn’t There and No Country for Old Men. The American Society of Cinematographers honoured him regularly, and he began working with more top directors: Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind), Stephen Daldry (The Reader), and Sam Mendes (Revolutionary Road). Mendes re-hired him for 2012’s Skyfall, a factor that played a big part in that film’s critical success, and three Denis Villeneuve collaborations followed – Prisoners, Sicario and Blade Runner 2049, which finally got him that Oscar.
A generous teacher, Deakins – now 70 – invites fans to ask questions via his website, and has long said that he doesn’t have a personal cinematographic style. Instead, he finds the language of each film in the script and creates a unique visual world. He is meticulous about camera lenses, choosing carefully to enhance the sense of intimacy with the performers, from Kate Winslet in The Reader to Meryl Streep in Doubt. Like any great cinematographer, he also plays with symmetry and scale, from the dream sequence in The Big Lebowski to the office shots in The Hudsucker Proxy. He works with light and space to startling effect: the landscape shots in No Country for Old Men and Blade Runner 2049 don’t just take your breath away, they draw you into a world and inform the story.
His next film, The Goldfinch, looks set to be equally immersive. From Brooklyn director John Crowley, the decade-spanning drama is based on the Pulitzer prize-winning novel. It tells of Theodore Decker, a boy who loses his mother in a bombing and grows up into a troubled young man (Ansel Elgort) who leads an eventful life. Nicole Kidman co-stars in the heart-wrenching period tale that has plenty of emotional beats for Deakins to hit. The “Goldfinch” of the title refers to a priceless artwork Decker’s mother showed him shortly before she died: a poignant conceit and a suitably painterly vision for Deakins to work with. From dream sequences to underwater scenes, and devastating explosions to lovers’ trysts, the film’s locations and visuals are as dramatic as the emotional journey we take along with the young protagonist. Deakins’s expertise brings us into Decker’s internal and external worlds, helping us to invest in him and identify with him: put simply, to feel what he feels.
The very best film worlds make you reluctant to leave, something that can be said of an unusual number of Deakins’s collaborations – probably more than any other cinematographer. He truly is a master at work, his technique so astute that you simply become enveloped by the magic of cinema. But when you see his name in the credits of The Goldfinch, you’ll remember Roger Deakins … and you’ll wonder when the next Oscar is coming.
Based on the Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch is released nationwide from 27 September
