There aren’t a whole lot of people out there obsessing over the results of the American Society of Cinematographers award, but for those who follow the Oscar race, it’s worth paying attention. Robert Elswit, who photographed There Will Be Blood, took home the society’s top award on Saturday, beating out Roger Deakins, who was up for his work on both No Country for Old Men and The Assassination of Jesse James..., Janusz Kaminski of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and Seamus McGarvey of Atonement.
Elswit had a tongue-in-cheek reaction for Variety, telling them, “I’m really lucky that Janusz (Kaminki) did extraordinary work a year after he resigned from the ASC, and that Roger (Deakins) is competing with himself. To avoid this (from happening again) there should probably be a category called ‘best cinematography in a movie by Roger Deakins.”
To be fair, Deakins did amazing work in both of those movies, but Elswit took a very different view on the same West Texas landscape as in No Country and found very different results. The society and the people scrabbling out a life in the parched earth looked completely different from the ranchers and sheriffs of No Country, and Elswit’s camera became a central storytelling element in Anderson’s film. Who can forget the sight of the burning oil derrick, or of the thunderstorm that rages behind Plainview, alone on the prairie?
The five nominees for the ASC awards match up completely with the Oscar nominees for only the second time ever, so these five will go head-to-head again in a month. Will Elswit be triumphant again, given that Deakins is competing against himself and Kaminski and McGarvey’s films don’t have as many nominations as Blood and No Country? Variety points out that there are only 298 members of the ASC, whereas over 6,000 people vote for best cinematography at the Oscars. So cheer for Elswit all you want, but we’ve still got a ways to go before the little gold men are handed out.
