Applause for Roger Deakins

I think we're living in the "good-cinema times" again.

Great movies are being released. Not just acceptable movies, which fill some sort of yearly quota, and are recognized by critics and audiences merely for rising above some low standard of mediocrity. No; rather, what we're getting are ambitious movies, borderline-visionary movies, works which strive to be remembered for more than six months. One gets the idea that, perhaps, directors are finally trying to measure up to their forefathers of the 1960's and 1970's. Finally, we're getting epoch-making films.

Behind two of these such films is Roger Deakins, a cinematographer who has previously lent his art to movies like Sid and Nancy, The Village, A Beautiful Mind, and The Man Who Wasn't There. Not all of these, granted, are superb. But, alas, he's not in charge of making them good; he just has to make them look good. And he's rather successful on that end.

In my opinion, however, it's this year that's he's done his best work. Not only are The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men, the best films, in general, that's he's ever been involved in; they are also, probably, the most gorgeous ones in his career as well.

Jesse James takes place in the fields, and in the swaying grass and grain of the Old West. No Country is more about the desert of Texas, and the arid expanses of the Mexican-American border. Occasionally, we venture into the nighttime streets of uneventful towns.

In both cases, what we get, visually, are panoramic, natural vistas, and characters who are not so much consumed by their surroundings, as they are fused into it. This is different from, say, Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala, where the Siberian Wilderness devours those who step into it. Through Deakins's lens, nature is not a violent force, but something more gentle. What we remember, from Deakins's scenes, is the caress of wind; the white specks of snow hitting Brad Pitt in the face and the distant shadow of a lumbering cloud crawling to the horizon.

When night arrives, Deakins inundates the frame with deep blacks and streaks of light, yellow and white. There is total darkness, and there are also hints of brightness. The streetlights filter through the open space where the key-hole should be; the candle-light shines inside a wooden house; the moon light illuminates the hill or the tree-lined path covered in snow. In a way, it's no wonder this is the same cinematographer who provided such striking black-and-white images for The Man Who Wasn't There; this is a man who loves his shadows. He makes you feel the dark; you can still see enough to make out where the characters are supposed to be standing, but you never see so much that you can possibly forget that it's after hours.

As for the daylight sequences, there is a certain glow to Deakins's visuals. His canvas seems covered in that pale, weak sunlight that arrives at six in the afternoon on a summer day, an hour before sunset. It's this glow, this muted lighting present throughout Jesse James and No Country, that gives each film its distinct melancholic aroma. And that's fitting. Because these are incessantly melancholy films.