Oscar Commentary 2017: Roger Deakins

Roger Deakins prepares yet another iconic shot.

If you’re a film buff like I am, you’ve probably heard the name Roger Deakins before. Even if you haven’t, chances are you’ve seen his cinematography in films like The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, and Skyfall. As one of the best and most well-known DP’s (director of photography) in the filmmaking business, it’s easy to see why he’s been nominated for fourteen Academy Awards for Best Cinematography. But like many great artists, he has continued contributing to hit after hit after hit without ever winning an Oscar. This is not uncommon in Hollywood. Many great directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese went through most of their careers and several nominations without winning anything, and the same can be said for actors like Leonardo DiCaprio. So when the time has come and Deakins finally has a shot at winning an Oscar for his stellar work on Blade Runner 2049, we must ask the same question we think but are too afraid to ask when every great artist gets to this point: does he deserve it?

Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) sees the car in front of her, but Roger Deakins sees the whole picture in Fargo.

Now since Roger Deakins has earned fourteen Oscar nominations to date, there have been fourteen chances so far for him to win. I’m going to examine five or six of those examples and figure out if he has deserved to win before, and if he deserves to win now. The most important thing to remember about the Oscars is that whether the politics come into play or not, it’s a competitive race. But it’s unique among competitive races in that you’re not actively playing against anyone. It’s kinda like figure skating in that sense. You can’t really one-up your opponent unless you pull a Tonya Harding, but given the nature of film production that’s almost impossible to do when you get this close to the awards season and the movies have already been released. You can give the performance of your career or craft the most amazing shots you’ve ever composed, but none of that matters if someone else does it even a little better. Voting statistics are never released, so it’s impossible to know for sure how close Deakins or anyone has come to winning in the past. But we can compare his work to the actual winners, and then we’ll see who actually deserved to win that year.

Roger Deakins captures Andy Dufresne’s (Tim Robbins) freedom in The Shawshank Redemption.

For this first example, we’ll go back to the beginning of Deakins’ streak with the Academy: The Shawshank Redemption. This is a movie that was robbed of nearly every Oscar it was nominated for, and even a few where it was left out of the race completely. But one of the things that helped it stand the test of time so well was Deakins’ cinematography. There are so many iconic shots throughout this movie that it’s hard to keep track of them all. But more than that, he understands what the audience would think to look at, and then highlights that while keeping important plot elements visible enough to be seen, but not as the main focus of the shot until they come back later. The winner that year was Legends of the Fall. Be honest, have you even heard of that movie? Has it lasted in the public eye? Has it played on TV for over two decades like The Shawshank Redemption? This is a movie that bombed at the box office and missed out completely in the Oscar race, but somehow managed to find an audience and stake its claim as one of the greatest movies of all time. Roger Deakins played a huge part in that, and absolutely should’ve won an Oscar here.

Through Roger Deakins’ lens, we see a dead body in the opening shot of True Grit.

But while he peaked early, he still kept doing great work. His collaborations with Joel and Ethan Coen have found him a lot of success in the Oscar race, particularly with films like Fargo and True Grit. His wide shots took full advantage of the lighting and atmosphere surrounding the actors, creating grim environments that you want to dive deeper into and explore. Fargo lost to The English Patient, and while we all have many passionate things to say about that movie, it was also beautifully shot. Should it have beat Fargo for cinematography? That’s debatable, but it was clearly a closer race in my mind than his previous loss. True Grit lost to Wally Pfister’s work on Inception. Are we really gonna argue with this one? Pfister made the impossible look possible, even if only in dreams. Despite the extensive visual effects used in that movie, the VFX artists still had wonderfully inventive shots to work with.

Only Roger Deakins knows exactly where Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is in No Country for Old Men.

But the biggest one to many people seems to be No Country for Old Men, which lost to There Will Be Blood. To be honest, I vote for Robert Elswit on this one, especially if you’ve seen the opening scenes of his film. The camerawork has to play a huge part in telling the story since it takes so long for anyone to say a word in this movie, and yet thanks to him and Daniel Day-Lewis, we understand everything that’s going on in Daniel Plainview’s mind. But I don’t think that’s why Deakins lost this one. I think he lost because he had another film in the race that year: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Because he had two films in the race, he likely split votes with himself, and that could’ve put even Atonement ahead of him. Remember, it’s a competition. And while you can’t one-up your opponent, you can very easily sabotage yourself by putting too many credits in the race.

James Bond (Daniel Craig) fights what he could have been and what he is through Roger Deakins’ cinematography in Skyfall.

But one of the things we can infer so far is that after Fargo, other DP’s were showing up more than he was. He had many nominations in between, but they lost to films like Titanic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and Slumdog Millionaire. These are some of the examples where his work was not as memorable compared to the competition. But that all changed when he joined the crew for Skyfall. As an action film, the expectations were for fast-paced editing and camerawork that was hard to make out, but Deakins brought artistry and fluidity to the shots. Yes, some of the edits were quick, but it was always going from one steady shot to another, and Deakins’ mastery of the camera was still present in all of them. At first glance, it seemed like this would finally be his year, and I would’ve loved to see that happen. But then Claudio Miranda took it home for his work on Life of Pi, which is kinda like Inception in terms of being very reliant on visual effects, but at the same time they also had beautiful shots to work with. While I might prefer Skyfall‘s cinematography, it’s understandable to see how Deakins lost this one.

Joi (Ana de Armas) bestows love on K (Ryan Gosling) just as the Academy may bestow love upon Roger Deakins for Blade Runner 2049.

So now we come to the present. After losing the Oscar to Emmanuel Lubezki three times in a row (Gravity, Birdman, The Revenant), Roger Deakins is now the frontrunner to win Best Cinematography for Blade Runner 2049. For the most part, his competition isn’t that noteworthy, but he is once again up against a Christopher Nolan film: Dunkirk. There are many technical aspects to this film that, if even a hair off, would’ve brought the overall product down immensely. But they all work together in a truly experiential harmony, starting with Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography. Whether you feel like you’re trapped on the beach or inside a Navy ship, the camerawork builds constant suspense throughout the entire runtime and never lets up. Roger Deakins brought us back to the world of Blade Runner, and even expanding on the world thanks to modern camera technology. But unlike Skyfall where he brought something new to the franchise, all he did was expand on the work of Jordan Cronenweth, the DP for the original Blade Runner. So while Deakins probably will take home an Oscar next month after fourteen nominations, but does he deserve it over Dunkirk?

The Dude (Jeff Bridges) does not abide The Big Lebowski missing out on a Best Cinematography nomination for Roger Deakins.

If Roger Deakins did win the Oscar, would it be his win? Or would it be more akin to an Honorary Academy Award celebrating his entire body of work? Whatever the case may be, this is a guy who genuinely deserves an Oscar for something. And while I don’t think this should be his year, he will definitely have at least one on his shelf before he’s done.

Stop, Go, or Slow Down: Blade Runner 2049

Harrison Ford (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark) as Rick Deckard in Blade Runner 2049.

Based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick and directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator), the 1982 sci-fi dystopian film Blade Runner starred Harrison Ford as a futuristic cop called a Blade Runner tasked with hunting down a group of Replicants, androids built like humans but with superhuman strength, but are banned from Earth. The film was a box office bomb and critical mix-up at first, but has since gained a strong cult following since its influence on such films as The Matrix (1999), Akira (1988), and Ghost in the Shell (1995), as well as the many different cuts of the film that have been released over the years (the 2007 Final Cut is the best version to-date).

From left-to-right: Denis Villeneuve, Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford, and Ryan Gosling on the set of Blade Runner 2049.

Because of this, a sequel was inevitable. But instead of Scott taking the director’s chair like in his Alien prequels, the task of helming this long-awaited sequel was given to Denis Villeneuve, who himself has had a mixed bag of films ranging from okay to terrible to great. Today, I am happy to inform you that Villeneuve has found his calling in sci-fi, because the quality of Blade Runner 2049 is much closer to that of Arrival (2016) than Prisoners (2013) or Sicario (2015).

The streets of Los Angeles as shown in Blade Runner 2049.

Obviously set in the year 2049, the film stars Ryan Gosling as K, a Blade Runner who is also a Replicant (not a spoiler, they say it in the first five minutes). After completing a routine job for the LAPD, K finds something that sets him on a path to find missing Blade Runner Deckard, all while trying to get himself out of a conspiracy that could spell the end of civilization as we know it.

Ryan Gosling (Drive, La La Land) as K in Blade Runner 2049.

I’ll say this right now, lower your expectations if you’re going to see this movie because of Harrison Ford because despite getting top billing next to Gosling, he’s not in the film much. In fact, he’s barely in it at all. But when he is onscreen, he’s still as rough and dry as he was in the original film. 90% of the film is owned by Ryan Gosling, and he sells every second of it, seldom losing his cool in even the toughest of firefights. Despite almost never smiling (he is a Replicant, after all), Gosling lets his face do all the acting for him, creating a character truly torn between the real and the artificial, as well as the meaning of both.

Roger Deakins (The Shawshank Redemption, Fargo) was the director of photography for Blade Runner 2049.

The world-building is still as strong as ever this time around. Roger Deakins’ work here reflects the style of the original while also standing out as its own work of art. The sets show a futuristic Los Angeles that is clearly the same city we saw in Blade Runner‘s vision of 2019 (from what I’m told it’s not that far off from LA in 2017), but 30 years further into the future: dark, gritty, and ravaged by natural and manmade disasters, but still populated with holographic advertisements, flying cars, and light-up umbrellas. The VFX team also did a great job bringing this technology to life, particularly with K’s holographic girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas). But despite all these technological advancements, the story still visits the same themes as the original (definition of life, meaning of memory, real vs. artificial), while also expanding upon them and integrating them further into the story. Re-visiting a cinematic world from decades past has never been more exciting.

Sylvia Hoeks as Luv in Blade Runner 2049.

My only major criticism about the film is about the villains. Whereas the first film had Rutger Hauer as the elegant yet tragic Roy Batty, this one features Jared Leto as manufacturer Niander Wallace and Sylvia Hoeks as his Replicant assistant Luv. Neither of them are particularly interesting, with Wallace’s sole motivation being increased profit and Luv only obeying every order he gives her. What made Batty so interesting was that he had nothing to lose that wasn’t already destined anyway, but everything to gain should he succeed in extending his lifespan. These villains aren’t bad, they clearly have motivation and desire, but they have little to gain or lose from their efforts, and they’re not especially memorable either. But when Gosling takes up 90% of the film and carries it from start-to-finish, it’s a sacrifice worth having.

A futuristic nightclub in Blade Runner 2049.

Overall, this is both a Villeneuve film and a Blade Runner film, and accomplishes both very well. I would be very excited now if they ever announced another sequel to expand upon this world, even if I have to wait until 2052 to see it.

Rating: GO