All five have been nominated before, but none has yet won an Oscar. Which will finally hear their name called to the stage?
This is
Ed Lachman's third Oscar nomination. His first two came for lensing the Todd Haynes movies
Far from Heaven and
Carol, which lost to
Road to Perdition (Connie Hall) and
The Revenant (Emmanuel Lubezki). Back in 2017 he won the American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement Award. His career stretches back to the 1970s and includes
The Lords of Flatbush (1974),
Lightning Over Water (1980),
Desperately Seeking Susan (1985),
True Stories (1986),
Mississippi Masala (1991),
The Virgin Suicides (1999),
The Limey (1999),
Erin Brockovich (2000),
A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Pablo Larraín's previous films
Jackie and
Spencer.
Best Cinematography is the only Oscar the bizarre and beautiful
El Conde is up for, same as Darius Khondji's nom last year for
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. No film has won this award while being its sole nominee. I wouldn't expect that to change this year. It is now the seventeenth primarily black & white film to be nominated since the category merged back in 1967 (until then two Oscars were given out each year for cinematography: one for color productions, one for B&W). Only three of those seventeen have won:
Schindler's List, Roma, and
Mank. Again, the odds are beyond slim
El Conde will join them. This year's
Maestro and
Poor Things both have many black and white sequences, but are not primarily or wholly presented in B&W.
Speaking of
Poor Things,
Robbie Ryan is an Irish-born D.P. enjoying his second Oscar nomination, the other coming for
The Favourite, his previous collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos. That year he lost out to Alfonso Cuarón's lensing of his own
Roma.
The Favourite had fun playing against the visual language of royal epics, like the use of disorienting fish-eye lenses instead of the panoramic vistas of manicured grounds and the lush trappings of a castle that are usually employed when that material is played straight. But for
Poor Things they really got to play and do absolutely whatever they wanted, no limits. Along with the nominated Production and Costume Design, Lanthimos and company created their own surreal world full of beauties and horrors.
Ryan made his mark lensing the films of Andrea Arnold including
Red Road, Fish Tank, and
American Honey and some of his other credits include John Maclean's
Slow West, Stephen Frears'
Philomena, Noah Baumbach's
The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) and
Marriage Story, Mike Mills'
C'mon C'mon, and Ken Loach's
I, Daniel Blake. He is already working on Lanthimos' next project, so goodness knows he may be back again, win or lose.
Matthew Libatique is enjoying his third nomination, his first two coming for his previous work with Bradley Cooper on his debut
A Star is Born and Darren Aronofsky's
Black Swan. He has shot most of Aronofsky's films (
π, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Noah, Mother!, and
The Whale) as well as projects for Spike Lee (
She Hate Me, Inside Man, Miracle at St. Anna, and
Chi-Raq), Joel Schumacher (
Tigerland, Phone Booth, The Number 23) and Jon Favreau (
Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Cowboys & Aliens), among others. His relationship with Aronofsky alone will probably end up with him winning an Oscar one day, but it won't happen this year for
Maestro.
At four,
Rodrigo Prieto has the most total nominations among this year's crop. His first came for Ang Lee's
Brokeback Mountain and the other three are all for collaborations with Scorsese:
Silence, The Irishman, and now
Killers of the Flower Moon. For as influential a visual filmmaker as Scorsese has been since he hit the scene in the early 1970s, only two of his titles has ever won the Best Cinematography Oscar:
The Aviator and
Hugo, both filmed by Robert Richardson. Prieto's work on this Western-ish epic could be the third. For good measure, Prieto also shot Greta Gerwig's
Barbie last year, and though he is not officially nominated for that one, the combo of
KOTFM and
Barbie may be what puts him over the top?
Some of Rodrigo's other credits include the early films of Alejandro González Iñárritu (
Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful), Spike Lee's
25th Hour, Julie Taymor's
Frida, Curtos Hanson's
8 Mile, Pedro Almodóvar's
Broken Embraces, Ben Affleck's
Argo, and Marty's
The Wolf of Wall Street. If he misses the trophy again this year, clearly it is only a matter of time before he gets one.
If Prieto doesn't prevail it will likely be
Hoyte van Hoytema's turn. His only other nomination came for Nolan's
Dunkirk, the year Roger Deakins finally won his long overdue Academy Award for
Blade Runner 2049. But Van Hoytema's resume is already terribly impressive. In addition to his work with Nolan, which also includes
Interstellar and
Tenet, he shot
Her for Spike Jonze,
The Fighter for David O. Russell,
Spectre for Sam Mendes,
Ad Astra for James Gray,
Nope for Jordan Peele, and his career really started proper with
Let the Right One In and
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for Tomas Alfredson.
The oversized IMAX visual spectacle of
Oppenheimer matches the complexity of the story being told, even when it is only focused on faces. This is the sixth Nolan movie to be nominated for Best Cinematography. The first four -
Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight and
Inception - were all done by Wally Pfister while
Dunkirk and
Oppenheimer are Hoyte. The only win among those first five was
Inception, but
Oppenheimer seems poised to join it.
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