Who Will Win the Oscar for Best Cinematography?

For a small film about growing up, Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is awfully polarizing. Some viewers latch onto it while others dismiss it as pretentious. But one thing unites lovers and haters alike: Emmanuel Lubezki's beautiful cinematography. After receiving his fifth Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography, the question on everybody's mind is, Will Lubezki finally get his due?

The cinematographer seemed to have the Oscar in the bag in 2007, when he was nominated for his groundbreaking work on "Children of Men." But ,in an upset -- Lubezki had already won that year's prestigious American Society of Cinematographers award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography -- Guillermo Navarro won the Oscar for "Pan's Labyrinth."

These snubs are not uncommon in the cinematography category. Longtime Coen brothers collaborator Roger Deakins has been nominated for an Oscar nine times, but he's never won. And as in most Oscar categories, a comedy will almost never win a Best Cinematography Oscar. But why is this category so prone to upsets? To find out, we need to look at the discrepancy between what Academy voters and cinematographers consider to be good cinematography.

The Cinematographer's Job

Camera Operator David E. Elkins offers a great summary of what a cinematographer does: "The [Director of Photography] is the head of all technical departments on a film crew and is responsible for establishing how the script is translated into visual images based on the director's request."

The definition perfectly encapsulates the cinematographer's twofold position as both a technician and an artist. Audiences may have been surprised that "Avatar" won Best Cinematography, but its 3-D camera technology was groundbreaking at the time. On "Children of Men," Lubezki and his crew had to invent an all-new car rig for the film's famous ambush scene.

When reading interviews with Lubezki, you get the sense that he was completely in sync with Terrence Malick's vision on "The Tree of Life." The cinematographer established a set of artistic parameters beforehand, like shooting with natural light and avoiding zoom lenses. While filming, he made sure that there were three cameras on hand, in case Malick wanted to quickly snatch a shot. The film feels very organic, like a series of happy accidents, but it took an impressive amount of planning to achieve that result.

How the Academy Casts Votes

The Academy's vote-casting process is a bit complicated, but here are the basics. Each specialty nominates its own candidates. Editors nominate editors, actors nominate actors, and cinematographers nominate cinematographers. The process becomes much more of a free-for-all once the nominations are released in January. At that point, all of the 6,000 Academy members can vote in nearly every nomination category.

While "Pan's Labyrinth's" cinematography is excellent, I suspect that Academy voters confused its wonderful art direction for exemplary cinematography. They took notice of its vivid visuals without taking into account how well the camerawork and lighting fit the movie. Films that look obviously pretty -- like the previous year's "Memoirs of a Geisha" -- tend to win the Best Cinematography Oscar. "Children of Men" is an impressive film, but it does not look pretty, at least in the traditional sense.

Fortunately for Lubezki, "The Tree of Life" is by its nature a beautiful-looking movie. Later this month, he may finally take home that long-deserved Oscar.

Sources:

Elkins, David E. "The Camera Assistant's Manual (Fourth Edition)." Burlington: Focal Press, 2005.

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