By most accounts, indie film legend Ed Lachman is expected to receive his second consecutive Oscar nomination for his work with the great Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín. The cinematography legend was nominated last year for Larraín’s striking black-and-white photography of a satirical gothic fable count; He is back in contention for this season’s Best Photography category with his superb paintings. Mariais a Netflix biopic starring Angelina Jolie, telling the life and inner world of the great 20th century opera diva Maria Callas.
hollywood reporter Recently sat down with Rahman for a special meeting THR presents A detailed discussion of the making of Maria – the complex camera, lighting and color choices that went into the film’s striking yet elegant images, the nature of Lachman’s collaboration with Jolie and Larraín, and the various principles that informed his work After decades behind the camera (watch the full conversation above).
A true icon of international independent cinema, Lachman worked with more than half a century of seminal directors before working with Larrain, including Werner Herzog (la soufriere), Wim Wenders (Tokyo), Robert Altman (a prairie home companion), Paul Schrader (Light sleeper), Sofia Coppola (virgin suicide), Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Lime Hotel), Larry Clark (Ken Parker), Mira Nair (Mississippi Marsala), Ulrich Seidl (Heaven trilogy), the most consistent being Todd Haynes (far from heaven, i’m not there, carol, Velvet Underground etc).
for Maria, Lachman said he and his director benefited from the fact that Maria Callas’ life was extensively documented—home videos, professional recordings of her performances, and portraits shot by the great magazine photographers of the day. The challenge for the film was to find a way to get deep into the character’s psyche, showing the audience Maria’s changing perspective on her sometimes traumatic and sometimes highly rare experiences in the world. Lachman and Larrain’s solution was to develop multiple film styles and camera formats to shoot Jolie, each representing a different aspect of the heroine’s memories, imagination, and real-life experiences.
as THRChief Film Critic had this to say about the Venice Film Festival: The film is beautifully made and, of course, features gorgeous visuals by the great Ed Rahman. The photographer captured the City of Lights in 1977 in muted autumn tones, rich in memories of that era, and transformed them into black and white or grainy color footage, allowing Callas to retreat back to memory many times. Lachman was nominated for an Oscar for his stunning chiaroscuro work in Larraín’s final film, countshooting Maria Using a combination of textures from 35mm, 16mm and Super 8mm as well as vintage footage. The director of photography’s fine work is enhanced by the exquisite contributions of production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas and costume designer Massimo Cantini Parrini.
“I felt like these different textures allowed us to understand her thoughts and ideas and how that thought expressed her presence in some way,” Rahman explains. “She lives in a high degree of reality – both on and off the stage. She even said herself: “The stage is my heart and opera is my soul. “So she lives in the opera house. The question Pablo and I worked on was how to convey to the audience in the film the feeling that you are participating in the opera of her life.”
Maria World premiere in Venice in August. The film will be released in select North American theaters on November 27 and will be streamed on Netflix on December 11.
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