Cinematographer
Roger Deakins is the cinematographer's cinematographer, the person other people who shoot films cite when asked who they admire. Fourteen Oscar nominations before his first win for Blade Runner 2049 became a running industry joke about the inexplicability of awards. His work spans thirty years of Coen Brothers collaborations, Shawshank Redemption, Skyfall, and 1917, a range that demonstrates the defining quality of his talent: total stylistic subordination to the story. He has no signature look. He has a signature quality: every frame is exactly as it should be.
Signature Traits
Major Works
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The prison as both literal and metaphorical space, photographed so that both registers are simultaneously present.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
West Texas as a moral landscape. The landscape is the film's most important character.
1917 (2019)
A film designed to appear as one continuous shot. The plan is invisible. The immersion is total.
