2013 Muriels: Best Cinematography

One of the nice things about the Body of Work category is it often lets us highlight people whose work would otherwise fall victim to vote-splitting and end up in the middle reaches of the results. It's rare we see a guy fight so hard against himself that someone else takes the crown from him. But... well, lookit this here: Third place:



Gravity (director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki) [104 points / 15 votes]

Second place:



To the Wonder (director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki) [123 points / 18 votes]

And your winner...



Inside Llewyn Davis (director of photography Bruno Delbonnel) [136 points / 21 votes]

"The Coen Brothers have had such a long and fruitful collaboration with Roger Deakins that any cinematographer taking his place (as Bruno Delbonnel did while Deakins was busy shooting Skyfall) would be greeted with skepticism even if his previous effort hadn’t been Tim Burton’s dreadful Dark Shadows reboot. Fortunately, Delbonnel has a much stronger resume backing up that misfire, including a previous collaboration with the Coens on their segment of the anthology film Paris, je t’aime. After viewing Inside Llewyn Davis, the highest compliment that can be paid Delbonnel is that Deakins isn’t missed at all.

The visual touchstone for the film, set in the early ‘60s Greenwich Village folk scene, is the cover of "The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan," and indeed the bulk of Llewyn Davis evokes a world extending past the borders of that famous shot of Dylan and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo huddling against the cold on a slushy New York street. Through Delbonnel’s lens, this world is soft and slightly dreamlike, suggesting our collective memory of a time and a scene we never actually experienced. The desaturated colors and snowblinding sheets of light pouring through windows of otherwise shadowy clubs and apartments are so transporting you may feel the need to put on a sweater.

The film takes on a more nightmarish quality when Llewyn takes a road trip to Chicago, and Delbonnel’s visuals adjust to reflect that. A roadside stop at a Fred Harvey Oasis restaurant (gleaming white floor, sea of red chairs) might well be taking place on the space station from 2001 or in some sinister Lynchian lounge. But the film’s predominant tone of melancholy and regret could hardly have found a better match in its visual presentation. As a bittersweet bonus, this may well be the last Muriels winner in this category to be shot on actual 35mm film. Inside Llewyn Davis is reason enough to hope that’s not the case." -- Scott Von Doviak

See the full results.