Mr. Crawley, has your recent Oscar win for Best Cinematography put pressure on what you choose for your next project?
No, I don't think so! I don't feel that pressure. I learned early on that a lot of this thing is about staying on the straight and narrow, you know? I'm on this path from A to wherever the Z may be, and if awards and things coincide with that — fantastic. I think the danger is if you start to strategize! I think the best thing to do is just to stay true to some sense of what it is that you love and enjoy doing. If you try to chase it or get ahead, it's easy to get seduced into things for the wrong reasons, or for different reasons.
So what is it that draws you to a film or project?
I think you have to be in love with the story, the environments and the people you're working with. I look for a challenge, but I also look for to stretch different muscles. I don't want to be repeating myself. I need to feel that at the end of the process, I’m in a different place than I was at the beginning. I came from a world of British social realism; films like Better Things that I shot for Duane Hopkins, and now I find it very hard to go back to London and shoot a feature film on a council estate with purely available light, do you know what I mean? I don’t have much left to give for that kind of story. I need to move on and progress.
“Why did cinema suddenly become relegated in some way, having to apologize for what it can be?”
Does that mean you’re finding yourself more interested in large scale, big budget, more ambitious films?
You know what? I actually think that the bigger the budget, the fewer the risks. Big budget, big scale films are not as challenging, both for us as practitioners and for the audience. Smaller budget films can take more risks, I think, so I would say I tend to gravitate towards those kinds of films. The Brutalist for example, was extremely ambitious, but with a budget of only $10 million. Its ambition is evident on the page; the final run time is more than three hours. It is event cinema. There’s a built-in intermission, it’s being presented where possible in 70 millimeter. It’s a night out, and I love that. I went to the ballet in Budapest recently, and that was four hours with two intermissions. It was wonderful. Why did cinema suddenly become relegated in some way, having to apologize for what it can be. The Brutalist is unapologetic about that, it’s very character driven, you’re drawn into the scenes of conversation and performance.
Watching those very dialogue heavy scenes, especially where László and Van Buren are in quiet discussion, I felt like I was part of the conversation. Is that how it felt for you as well?
Certainly the performances were extraordinary and mesmerizing, but as cinematographer, you’re also so aware of what you’re doing. As much as you're drawn into the scenes, you're very aware of the responsibility of filming. I'm looking at shifts in lighting, making sure that someone in the background hasn't you know stared through a window. You’re very attuned in that moment. But there were definitely other moments that felt very intimate, you know, the opening of the film on the ship where László wakes up and I was kind of twisting above him, tethered to him, responding to his performance… It was almost like a dance between Adrien Brody and myself. That was a scene where I got more mesmerized and more lost in it because it was like being this kind of conduit or a vessel between the performance and the audience, which is an extraordinary position to be in.
That sounds like it requires a strong intuition when you’re behind the camera.
I remember when I worked on Ballast, which was the first film I ever shot. That came out in 2008 and that was with Lance Hammer, and it was his first film as well. We didn't know each other, but we had to trust each other very early on. He invited me to film some of the early rehearsals and I worked with this little handheld digital camera. I think he saw the way that I responded, and my sensibility to the scenes. We were able to just go in with intent and a sensibility, rather than a set shot list.
“I think there’s something really extraordinarily beautiful about being alive to the world, alive to the moment.”
Where did you learn that kind of instinctual way of working?
I think I’ve always had that, to a certain degree. I think it's integral to the sort of cinematography that I aspire to. I look at Robbie Ryan, Robby Müller, Anthony Dod Mantle, Christopher Doyle, Harris Savides, all of these cinematographers that I'm drawn to, they all shoot on film. And the very idea of shooting on film is about relinquishing some control, you don't know what the alchemical process is ultimately going to give you, right? I think there's something really extraordinarily beautiful about that. Those cinematographers are also alive to the world, alive to the moment. They're not making a blueprint for making films or getting from A to B to C to D, like Hitchcock would. I just think it’s essential to be open and responsive to the moment. It’s almost a documentarian sort of take on the world.
Is that why you also prefer to shoot with natural light? To keep that documentarian vision alive?
I do love to shoot with natural light, I love the way it behaves and the unpredictability of it. I love the accidental and the found. But the thing is that although it may be a documentarian take, I’m not shooting a documentary. I have to make sure that a scene is consistent. I can’t be completely at the mercy of the light changing and shifting throughout the day because I am trying to tell a story. For example, in Childhood of a Leader, the first film I shot with Brady Corbet, there's a scene with Stacy Martin giving a French lesson to the young boy. And it's springtime, so there’s this hard sun coming in. If I wasn't lighting it at all, it would be like something is missing. So it’s a fine balance for me.
Aside from Childhood of a Leader and The Brutalist, you and Corbet also collaborated on his film Vux Lox. You must have developed quite a shorthand by now.
Yeah, we do, absolutely. I mean, having that shorthand, having that history together, is incredibly important. It's all about trust! Brady asked me to shoot Childhood of a Leader, our first film together, because presumably, he liked my aesthetic and what he'd heard about my approach. But when we finally got on a call, he liked me. And that’s really important! With Brady and I, our tastes are kind of aligned, and our aesthetic is aligned. Half of what I do is about being someone to be with on set, someone whose company you can enjoy.