When the Oscars are finally (finally!) handed out Sunday evening, you may hear an impassioned comment or two from the stage about the importance of the art of cinematography. Maybe you’ve heard some of them already. Earlier this month, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the cinematography award — along with the prizes for film editing, live-action short and makeup and hairstyling — would be presented during a commercial break. Filmmakers, critics and various Film Twitter denizens unleashed a storm of outrage so intense that the academy reversed its decision, happily for those of us who still cherish the Oscars and remain foolish enough to believe that they can, on occasion, do the right thing. Still, there was something heartening about the tributes to cinematography and editing that emerged — indignant reminders that without these basic building blocks, the medium wouldn’t even exist. The academy is hardly alone in perpetuating this neglect. Critics sometimes review movies as if they were novels, neglecting to note how a picture’s visual style — its composition, its use of color or black-and-white, its camera movement or lack thereof — can shape, enhance or even subvert its meaning. Good editing can be an even harder achievement to describe, since it is so often an art by subtraction, an invisible alchemy that transpires between individual shots and frames. Advertisement OSCARS 2019: Full list of Academy Award nominees » I saw quite a few superbly photographed and edited movies in 2018, including “Black Panther,” “First Reformed,” “Hereditary,” “If Beale Street Could Talk,” “Private Life” and “You Were Never Really Here,” none of which received a nomination in either category. I’ll suspend further comment on the comparative weakness of this year’s editing category, except to note that “BlacKkKlansman” and “The Favourite” strike me as the sole worthy nominees, while the presumed front-runners, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Vice,” offer the kind of jumpy nonlinear narratives that frequently get mistaken for impressive editing rather than choppy screenwriting. The cinematography race offers a much more satisfying range of possibilities. Best cinematography, quite a few directors of photography will tell you, is too often mistaken for prettiest cinematography. Certainly the exquisite images in this year’s five nominees — “Cold War,” “The Favourite,” “Never Look Away,” “Roma” and “A Star Is Born” — might seem at first to bear out this prejudice, given that they could furnish five equally gorgeous coffee-table books. In the case of “Roma,” shot in shimmering black-and-white by the director Alfonso Cuarón, such a book actually exists (and being in possession of a copy, I can tell you it weighs nearly as much as my coffee table). Yalitza Aparicio and Marco Graf in the movie “Roma.” (Carlos Somonte/Netflix) RELATED: ‘Roma’s’ Alfonso Cuarón shows us the Mexico City streets that shaped his Oscar-nominated film » The beauty of Cuarón’s work lies not merely in the depth and sharpness of its widescreen images (achieved on the large-format Alexa 65 digital camera), but also in its skillful use of camera movement and shot duration. In re-creating stretches of the bygone Mexico City of his childhood, Cuarón both continues and departs from the virtuosic, hyper-alert style he developed with his longtime d.p., Emmanuel Lubezki (“Gravity,” “Children of Men”). He enters into the fog of his memories and brings them into crystalline focus. Advertisement He likes to survey his protagonist, an indigenous Mixtec woman named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) who works as a maid for a middle-class family, from a respectful distance, in gliding long takes that hum and bustle with quotidian activity. When the movie goes in for an occasional closeup, the sense of intimacy is piercing. It’s undeniably stunning work, its domestic tableaux and urban panoramas containing strong echoes of realist masters like India’s Satyajit Ray, Japan’s Yasujiro Ozu and Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien. To these mightily impressed but not entirely enraptured eyes, there remains a self-admiring quality to Cuarón’s imagery that keeps full immersion at bay. Where those earlier filmmakers seemed to enfold their characters in the gentlest of visual embraces, “Roma” has the coolly engineered precision of a social-realist blockbuster: The rigor of the compositions and the choreography often lacks a crucial element of spontaneity, of raw, unvarnished life. It may be the first movie in which Cuarón’s love for his characters feels eclipsed by his love for his technique. Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot in the movie “Cold War.” (Amazon Studios) Advertisement Review: Pawel Pawlikowski’s ‘Cold War’ is a stunning, white-hot romance » You might accuse Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War,” the category’s other black-and-white nominee, of a similar self-regard. Even a friend who adores this time-skipping, border-crossing Polish romance concedes that its impeccably stylish, high-contrast monochrome at times seems redolent of a Calvin Klein ad. Still, perfume-commercial aesthetics can be deceptive. And the gleaming patina of Lukasz Zal’s photography turns out to be crucial to the picture’s slippery method, which is to seduce you with ravishing surfaces and then startle you with the depth of its heartache. Two lovers, Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig), meet as members of a Polish theatrical ensemble in 1949, and “Cold War,” while not quite a full-blown musical, pays lovely homage to bygone traditions of folk performance. The camera drifts in and among the singers and dancers on stage with an almost narcotic intensity, as though it were trying to lose itself in the grandeur of their music making. But while the movie initially crowds the frame with bodies in expertly synchronized motion, gradually its spaces seem to empty out: The illusion of a bustling communal existence seems to die alongside Wiktor and Zula’s romantic dreams. Advertisement As he did with Pawlikowski’s Oscar-winning “Ida” (which he shot with Ryszard Lenczewski), Zal employs a boxy aspect ratio that strikingly evokes the pictures of an earlier era. (Notably, the spare, austere visuals of “Ida” directly influenced Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed.”) It’s the right choice for a movie about characters who seem increasingly isolated from each other and the world around them. The nearly square frame, no less than the battle-scarred continent they keep traversing, becomes a kind of prison.<doc-sep>Right when the Academy tried to snub the cinematographers, the category snuck back into the award show’s normal programming…with a vengeance. Tonight, the 91st annual Academy Awards took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, and Roma won the Oscar for Best Cinematography. The blockbuster was up against Cold War, The Favourite, Never Look Away﻿ and A Star Is Born. Although the Academy tried to cut the Best Cinematography category from this year’s TV broadcast, it reversed its decision after receiving loads of backlash. Previous winners include Blade Runner 2049, La La Land, The Revenant, Birdman, Gravity, Life of Pi, Hugo and Inception. So yeah, pop the bubbly. RELATED: Oscar Nominations 2019: Here’s Who Made the Cut<doc-sep>The camera takes on an observational approach, often panning around environments to give a further sense of location and atmosphere. Characters are typically framed near to the camera, with the bustle of everyday life visible around them.<doc-sep>More than 50 years have passed since the Oscar categories honoring color and black-and-white cinematography merged. In that time, 1993’s Schindler’s List has been the only film of the latter style to win. But monochrome’s unlucky streak could soon come to an end: Roma and Cold War are this year’s top picks for best cinematography, marking the first time since 1966 that multiple nominees have been shot in black-and-white. The stories date to eras of personal significance for the filmmakers. The Spanish-language Roma, set in 1970s Mexico City, highlights the resilience of Cleo, a housekeeper based on writer-director Alfonso Cuarón’s childhood nanny; Cold War, set primarily in mid-20th-century Poland and France and told in six European languages, follows a tumultuous decades-long romance between a couple loosely inspired by writer-director Pawel Pawlikowski’s parents, Wiktor and Zula. Whereas directors determine the overall vision of a film, cinematographers are the ones who physically execute it by leading the camera and lighting crews. Cuarón served as his own cinematographer after scheduling conflicts led his usual collaborator, three-time Oscar winner Emmanuel Lubezki, to back out; Pawlikowski chose to team up for a second time with Lukasz Zal, who recently won the top feature prize from the American Society of Cinematographers for Cold War. (They previously worked together on 2014’s Ida, which joins 2013’s Nebraska, 2011’s The Artist and 2009’s The White Ribbon as the only black-and-white cinematography nominees of the past decade.) Both movies were shot digitally, meaning they lack the softer aesthetic of movies shot on film decades ago. When paired with monochrome palettes and stories from the past, this visual crispness evokes the feeling of recalling distant yet poignant memories. Cold War, for instance, is set against the backdrop of a conflict that didn’t culminate in traditional warfare. Pawlikowski chose to interpret the harsh effects of a totalitarian regime through memories of his parents’ romance, according to Zal. Black-and-white, Zal said, both nods to the past and “allows you to create your own interpretation.” But Roma and Cold War are very different black-and-white films. Whereas Pawlikowski and Zal opted for a stylized look, Cuarón’s is more naturalistic. Much of Roma takes place in the spacious house of Cleo’s employers, modeled after the home Cuarón grew up in. The shades of gray chosen for its interior and exterior achieve a gentle visual contrast in line with the overall aesthetic of the neighborhood. In addition to favoring wide shots, Cuarón used extensive tracking shots in which the camera moves parallel to the actors. The film has a documentary-like feel that, per IndieWire, Cuarón described to Lubezki in a December discussion as “a ghost of the present visiting the past, objectively without getting involved.” Take an emotional scene in which Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) stands outside the house with her arms around the family’s youngest child, Pepe (Marco Graf), their light-colored clothes blending into the light gray wall. His parents argue in the foreground, but Cuarón doesn’t cut to Cleo or Pepe’s reactions. The camera maintains a distance. “It’s mysterious and very emotional,” Lubezki said of Cuarón’s style, according to IndieWire. “It feels like the camera and the cinematography are not there to illustrate; they are the film itself.” Cold War, on the other hand, operates in high contrast on every level. The film follows stoic musician Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and young, uninhibited singer Zula (Joanna Kulig), who fall in love despite their differing temperaments. They meet at a Polish performance academy influenced by the oppressive regime, and yet their wildly uncontrollable love burns bright. Zal picked out reference points of black and white for every shot and constructed the rest of the image around them — a lesson he learned from working on Ida. Production design, costuming and makeup followed suit. The dresses women in Zula’s singing troupe wear, for example, have dark bodices and vivid white sleeves. When Zula and Wiktor reunite in Paris, their dark attire often stands out against the glamorous buildings’ pale walls. Zula, who thrived in Poland, feels suffocated in Paris. Zal captured her disconnectedness using a shallow depth of field, and upped the visual contrast to illustrate the couple’s constant clashing: “There were no shades of gray,” Zal said. At the Oscars, Roma and Cold War also will compete against each other in the foreign language and directing categories. Joyce Eng, a senior editor at awards prediction website Gold Derby, considers Cuarón a lock for best director. His best cinematography chances are also strong, she said, given the novelty of him being the first filmmaker to earn nominations in both categories at once. But the ASC chose Zal, and academy members might feel inclined to share the wealth — Roma, after all, also received best picture, actress, supporting actress, original screenplay, production design, sound design and sound mixing nominations. No matter the results, Eng added, the evolution of the academy into a more diverse voting body could lead to more recognition for “exciting and dynamic filmmaking around the world.” The academy’s taste is much more eclectic than it was when the categories merged, or even when Schindler’s List won. “Maybe black-and-white will become a little more in vogue now,” she concluded.<doc-sep>
The Oscar committee has decided that the Best Cinematography category is no longer worthy of being televised. Let’s use this week’s Roundtable to remind them how important photography is to the art of motion picture storytelling, whether our choices won awards or not. Deirdre Crimmins Of course cinematography is important! Film is a visual medium, and the best movies use this vantage to communicate much more than just a play on screen. The first example that leaps to mind of this is one of my favorite films, The Third Man. Carol Reed’s 1949 noir dark comedy is one of the cinematic pillars holding up modern filmmaking, and it does so by using every single frame to tell a story. It’s beautifully shot (you only need to revisit the sewer chase scene to establish that), but it’s so much more than that. The moment we see Orson Welles on screen, the camera strikes a Dutch angle and rewrites the visual language of the entire film in just one cock of its kino eye. Simply put, The Third Man could have been an entirely different movie if different decisions were made by Robert Krasker, and there’s no doubt that his contributions directly impacted one of the greatest films of all time. It’s appalling to think that the Academy now thinks these artists should be relegated to a lesser stage to celebrate their craft. Shannon Nutt Imagine if after 14 nominations, we were not allowed to witness Roger Deakins finally win an Oscar for Best Cinematography (for Blade Runner 2049)? Moments like that (and for other categories) are about to be robbed from movie lovers everywhere thanks to the Academy’s recent decision. That said, my love of cinematography and how it can be used to tell a great story dates back to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. There, cinematographer Bill Butler (who was snubbed of an Oscar nomination, and whose long and impressive résumé as a director of photography includes such movies as Rocky II through IV, Grease, and The Conversation) had to use the camera to give an impression of a shark that was almost never there (thanks to well-documented mechanical issues). His ability to bring a sense of terror to visuals along with the difficult task of shooting much of the movie on the water (back in the days when CGI was non-existent) has thrilled audiences for over 40 years. It’s one of the most impressive (and perhaps most underappreciated, as Spielberg often gets most of the kudos and credit) efforts by a cinematographer in movie history.. Brian Hoss The medium of film, the movies that are produced, released, and consumed in this century and the last, continue to be one of the most, if not the most dominate form of cultural, artistic, and popular expression. I expect that these stories, these films, that have already lasted for decades will continue to be passed down to future generations much like the oral and written histories that have preceded this era. But it’s important to bear in mind that movies are a visual medium, and that visual storytelling is often what transcends the barriers of understanding that exist between the different languages, different backgrounds, and the different times of the respective viewers. It’s possible the Oscar committee has decided that the Best Director category represents enough of the director’s influence on cinematography in the public’s mind that the Best Cinematography award can be downplayed further, but that’s perhaps only as true as the Best Picture category being representative of the Best Director award. Last year, Blade Runner 2049 won for Best Cinematography, beating out several impressive nominees, but at that same time, presenting visuals that do credit to the medium. Naturally, as the Oscars committee spurns recognizing Cinematography, I can’t help but think of the visually arresting The Fountain, which went without an Oscar nomination in 2006. There were several deserving films that year, yet I think The Fountain should have been recognized as it depends on its incredible cinematography to arguably a greater degree than that year’s winner, Pan’s Labyrinth. Frankly, I would suggest not only making sure that the Best Cinematography award remains in discussion, but actually increasing the amount of discourse (and related importance) for cinematography of the past and present. M. Enois Duarte Personally, I feel the Academy’s decision of awarding the category for cinematography during the commercial break as doubly offensive.