Not to exclude stellar photography all the world over, but there’s a common theme here in The Playlist’s picks for Best Cinematography ‘20: America. The year is littered with movies about the red, white, and blue in one form or another, to one extent or another, movies that capture either a period of time, or an enduring ethos, or tall tales and B.S. we tell ourselves as citizens of the self-styled greatest country in the world.
READ MORE: The Best Cinematography Of The Decade [2010s]
Altogether, they add up to an unflattering picture, but at least it’s framed well; America revealed as less than the sum of its self-aggrandizement still looks real darn pretty, whether the plains of today’s American West, the studio backlots of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the romantically lit streets of New York, or frontier Oregon in the 1820s.
READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2020
Even movies shot elsewhere on the planet feel like a commentary on this big dumb nation of ours. In some cases, the comments are indirect and made explicitly through the history of American genre cinema. In others, the subtext punches through the text and leaves no doubt about which place the film really has on its mind. “America” isn’t just a country: It’s a state of mind, a way of thinking, and a whole aesthetic unto itself. It’s almost viral. You can travel halfway across Earth and still reckon with America by visiting lands impacted by our geopolitics and by our relentless need for social capital and capital capital. The United States is a global smog, and many of these films (and even a few TV shows) make that point at the business end of their camera lenses.
READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2021
Enjoy our selections for 2020’s Best Cinematography, in no particular order:
Click here to follow along with our various Best of 2020 lists.
“On the Rocks”
Sofia Coppola’s latest is her first New York movie and a reunion with Bill Murray 17 years after making “Lost in Translation”; the focus among critics fell less on the former and more on the latter, and so the film was, is, seen as an acting showcase instead of a demonstration of fine photography. Don’t sleep on Philippe Le Sourd: The guy made “The Grandmaster” with Wong Kar-wai and found the innate poetry in martial arts cinema without going overboard wringing his hands over how to make it artsy, and rightly earned an Academy Award nod for his trouble. After collaborating with Coppola on “The Beguiled” in 2017, he takes a soft eye to New York’s streets, pulling film for extra metropolitan romanticization and creating a backgrounding palette of blacks and greys to make foregrounded colors pop. “On the Rocks” might be all about Coppola’s casting—Murray, yes, but also the luminous and wonderful Rashida Jones—but Le Sourd sets the perfect stage for them to work on. – Andrew Crump
“Mank”
Sitting somewhere in-between mournful and miraculous, just like the magic of the movies, Erik Messerschmidt’s photography on “Mank” blends Greg Tolland’s landmark B/W silhouette work on “Citizen Kane,” with David Fincher’s meticulous sharp contrast sheen. Some have complained about the expressly digital look (complete with CGI cigarette burns), being a movie about classic Hollywood, but considering the director’s customs is very likely a deliberate disparity. Utilizing Welles and Tolland’s engulfing use of wide-angle space less so than reigning in Fincher’s strengths for staging and perfectly timed movement in key with his actors – such as two successive shots where Arliss Howard’s terrifically prickly Louis B. Mayer is placed center-stage, the low-angle camera tracking back as he prattles on about his studio. A fantastic party scene begins with Mayer making a birthday speech, but ends the conversation confused as to what in all hells is being talked about (What’s a concentration camp?”). Fincher’s concise array of choices in where to put the camera around the room – Howard’s character getting more and more confused – tells a whole story, the zip n’ zing political banter growing into an overbearing onslaught, snapping faster and faster between a titanic assemblage of shot coverage. “Mank” has so many amazing set-ups it’s almost hard to keep up. – Andrew Bundy
“Lovers Rock”
“Texture” is a word used too often as filler when a better, specific word eludes the mind. In the case of “Lovers Rock,” the shortest and arguably best chapter in Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” series, texture is a very real factor in Shabier Kirchner’s camerawork, as it is in each of the five movies. (Kirchner shot all of “Small Axe” for McQueen, which gives the quintet visual as well as thematic kinship.) McQueen’s 70-minute party picture is tangible; each shot has weight, gravity, inviting the viewer to reach through their screens and touch the walls, tap the floor with their toes, wrap an arm around a dance partner. Aesthetically, “Loves Rock” is about presence: McQueen and Kirchner want us to be there in this house for the party, the backyard where one young woman is assaulted by her suitor and then rescued by a former romantic rival, the streets where the suffocating effect of white supremacy takes form via the threat of white violence. The film is a mood, but it’s also a shape, something we can see, hear, and feel. – AC
“Da 5 Bloods”
Newton Thomas Sigel shot Spike Lee’s version of John Ford and Howard Hawks movies in four different aspect ratios. If anyone needs to hear more than that, well, imagine the big pain in the ass and even bigger expense of not only acquiring 16mm film, but shipping it back to the United States from Vietnam to process the dailies. And that’s just the logistical side of the challenge Lee put before Sigel; creatively, finding ways to switch from each format—16mm stock in boxy 1.33:1, digital in ultrawide 2.39:1, digital in 16:9, and Super 8 in 2.39:1—without being precious or too obvious is a headache even for veteran cinematographers. Sigel clearly shot “Da 5 Bloods” on a generous Motrin regimen because he weaves each format effortlessly into each other, taking the film to sweeping, epic peaks when he must and hemmed-in firefights when he needs. – AC
“She Dies Tomorrow”
Well, she has to go sometime, right? Jay Keitel shoots Amy Seimetz’ latest, a major entry in her filmography and one of the few works released this year that appropriately and accidentally captures 2020 ennui at feature-length, using a riot of multi-color washes and a handful of lenses each employed to snare a certain tone or sensation as the picture rattles from one emotion to another; spending time with “She Dies Tomorrow” is a lot like spending time in a career depressive’s brain, spiking to grieving hysteria before taking a roller coaster ride back down to lugubrious, but admittedly mellowed, nihilism. Is it horror? Is it a thriller? Is there really an inexplicable and highly contagious disease going around that leads the infected toward violent existential crises? Whatever the movie’s “truth” is, Keitel’s photography ensures it remains elusive and haunting. – AC