Those who’ve seen his films know Ed Lachman as a key collaborator of (naming just some) Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola, Steven Sodebergh, Paul Schrader, and Pablo Larraín, with whom his latest collaboration, Maria, is now in theaters and soon on Netflix amidst the studio’s awards blitz. Those who attend EnergaCAMERIMAGE know him as a figurehead, no less essential to the festival than any top brass and treated like royalty at any screening, seminar, or party. It was here nearly a decade ago that I spoke to Lachman on the occasion of Carol, and in 2024 he’s been bestowed a lifetime achievement award––equal-parts earned and obligatory. To paraphrase Leonard Cohen on Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, granting Ed Lachman such honors at a cinematography festival is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.
As Far from Heaven, his first of numerous Todd Haynes collaborations, played in the Cinema City multiplex, Lachman and I sat in the lobby to discuss his award, his collaborations, and the costs and benefits of innovating in a world of digital cameras and HDR grades.
The Film Stage: Far from Heaven is playing next door.
Ed Lachman: Which is my beginning here. I came here in 2002. I got an award in Venice, and so I think that’s how they found out about me and invited me. And then ever since Far from Heaven, it’s such a special kind of environment. They honor the images––for me, the language of cinema––along with words. It’s also a place where… you don’t normally have a forum with other cinematographers to talk about your own images and the problems and solutions that we’re all facing. So I get to meet other cinematographers that I normally wouldn’t meet, but we kind of all know each other through our work. It’s a very special kind of environment.
This retrospective has Far from Heaven, Carol, Light Sleeper, and Don’t Blink — Robert Frank, which is a movie I actually helped release in America; I used to work for Grasshopper, the distributor.
Oh, sure, sure, sure. And really, I only shot maybe 35, 40% of that, but because Robert was such an important influence for me––why I even became an imagemaker, a cinematographer––and that I’m close to Laura [Israel], that I thought it would be important to put that in my retrospect just to show the evolution of, you know, my interest in photography.
So you had a hand in picking the films?
Yeah. I gave them a selection. The one film that was going to be here and they… it was very weird. They couldn’t get the permission until they found it at the last minute was I’m Not There––because it was a Weinstein release and that had been bought up and it was kind of in confusion who owned the rights to it. So anyway: that got worked out, but by that time they had already printed up the schedule. And probably Don’t Blink took that spot.
You have such a long, expansive career; the collection of films is very eclectic. You’ve also directed at least two films (Ken Park and Songs for Drella) and even comparing them isn’t necessarily so easy––not so easy to think of them as coming from the same person. Do you think there’s a truly sufficient way of summarizing your filmography in just a handful of titles?
Well, I think if there’s any aspect of my interest it’s that they’re character-driven stories. The form, I’ve always been open to explore the form, because my background was in studying art history and painting. So you learn about different images through different movements in painting––why they exist the way they do because of the historical, social, economic, political position that the artists took to create those images. So, so it’s never been a jump for me to explore different… like, I had never shot a horror film with Gothic, and then I was able to plug in and shoot El Conde. I’m more interested in what images represent––how you explore, how you find the in into those images.
And that’s something I learned through Todd Haynes, in a way, because he’s always interested in the mythology of how those images are created, effect what the images are. You know, the old story: does content drive form or form drives content? Well, it’s… it’s both. [Laughs] So it’s not one thing. But I think if there’s anything, like you say, I always felt like I came out of documentary. I started with the Maysles brothers and so I think all films are documents, in a certain way. And that’s why I love Ulrich Seidl’s work. I think my base is always whatever our illusion of reality is. [Laughs] That I’m interested in how you explore images through your perception. That’s the way I talk about Robert Frank, in a way: he instilled for me the idea that you could have your own subjectivity about what an image was––that you can imbue an image with a poetics through your own subjectivity and experience in the moment with that image.
Do you find that the directors you work with is it sort of a prerequisite that you’re allowed to have that sort of presence and autonomy?
Well, I think the directors I’ve been able to work with have a game plan––have a visual concept of the language––and they realize that every story isn’t told the same way. I mean, the remarkable thing about someone like Pablo Larraín is: he uses different visual grammar for each film. Well, so does Todd Haynes. Right? So it’s great that you go in with a conceptual idea, but then to be open to the varies of what’s happening in front of the camera in that moment in time within that, how can I say, within that structure. So I love the idea that they can be responsive in the moment within a stylistic approach.
I mean, you are right that the films do look different. And it’s funny because a couple years ago, you didn’t get to shoot May December with Haynes. And then Christopher Blauvelt came in to do it. All of us cinephiles love Todd Haynes so much. How could you not? But I do think there was a bit of worry about “Ed Lachman’s not going to shoot it. It’s not going to be the same.” Right? And I think that speaks to how much your work has affected people.
That’s very nice. I mean, Todd was very strong visually himself. That was an unfortunate situation. I broke my hip in Chile on Pablo’s film. And it was a question. They said I could have done it, but we didn’t know and so they made a choice. So––in all fairness to Christopher Blauvelt, who’s done beautiful work with Kelly Reichardt––he was kind of thrown into that at the last minute. [Laughs] Todd and I discussed a totally different conceptual idea––more like Persona––and then he wasn’t able to shoot it in black-and-white, I guess, by that time. So he had other ideas of how he wanted to shoot it. But, you know, I wasn’t part of that at that point.
That was your intention, to shoot May December in black-and-white?
Originally, yeah.
I thought Blauvelt equipped himself really well. I think it’s a great-looking film.
Yeah. Great.
And it feels like Haynes.
Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, you know, we’re there… listen: I think a cinematographer is another actor. They give a certain kind of performance. I always say, “If acting is acting and reacting, that’s what a cinematographer does: acting and reacting.” And so I always feel like the cinematographer is giving another kind of performance.
Well, I do have to congratulate you first on the lifetime achievement Award, It’s funny because sometimes I’ve talked to people who get a lifetime achievement Award at a festival and they say that it’s appreciated, but they worry that it’s somebody signaling to them it’s time to be put out to pasture.
Well, I don’t mind because I’m 78 and I have so much stuff I want to do on my own. And I do. I do installations, photography exhibits; I’ve been making conceptual films, small films, for museums. If Maria is my last film, it’s fine with me. I don’t think it will because people still call me, but I’m not worried about that. [Laughs]
I was going to say… it’s tremendous that you get this lifetime achievement Award at the same time that they’re playing Maria, which is already such a big film.
Yeah, I’m very fortunate that way.
I know that you shot the film on a number of formats. There was 8mm, 16mm, 35mm.
Black-and-white and color.
And it’s nice. Because I remember I had seen Dark Waters just before coming here in 2019 and run into you at one of those parties, and you said something I thought was really interesting, which is that you’d wanted to shoot it on film and you couldn’t, so you pushed the image in post to suggest contamination.
Right, right, right.
But Maria is a case where you do get to shoot it on celluloid. It’s nice that you can work to your preferences on such a big project.
Well, we were lucky there was a lab. Pablo’s preference is always to shoot on film, but we couldn’t shoot on film on El Conde because there’s no more lab in Chile and it would have to gone to Mexico and it would have made it much more complicated and financially. We had the advantage that there’s the national film lab. In fact The Brutalist was shot on film and used that lab. And there’s a number of films that are shooting. So that was the advantage. But also, for me, when I’m shooting a period film, I love to shoot in the textures of that period. Even though it’s not the same film stock, I can manipulate it through exposure, through color rendition, through lenses to make it feel more like that period than I could do through digital means.
I’m Not There, you do––speaking broadly––the Pennebaker thing in the Blanchett segment. It’s not unnoticed and not unappreciated, I’ll say. But with Netflix there’s different grades that are done for Dolby Vision and HDR. I’m curious what some of your experiences are working on HDR grades of 8 and 16 millimeter footage, and any sort of post-processing––trying to maintain their character and texture.
So interesting, about that question. The truth of the matter is: I’ve never shot for HDR. So I don’t want to change it in that post position. That’s partly what my job is: to create the latitude of the film stock, you know, for the look that I’m going for. When I honestly go into “an HDR mode”––or whatever you want to call the HDR print––I make it look like what I did. I don’t use all the nits, or whatever you call it. I bring it back to the way I’ve done it in the shooting. Now, because I’ve never had an HDR monitor on set, when I shoot for HDR, then I have to shoot with it on set; I can’t do it after the fact. Because that’s what I’m playing with. That’s what I play with––with the EL Zone system, my exposure system for digital, or with the way I expose my negative. I’m the one on the set or on the location making those choices about… to me it’s almost like the framing thing. Like, “Wow, you shoot 8K and so then you can reframe everything.” Well, that’s what I’m doing on the set. I don’t need to reframe after the fact.
It really seems a lot of these “advancements” in image-capture and presentation are two steps forward, one step back.
Marketing. It’s all marketing. It’s all a way to sell something. [Laughs] It isn’t necessarily what cinematographers want.
I think you’ve equipped yourself so well. Dark Waters, I was shocked when I found out that wasn’t shot on film because of what you did to the push the image.
Well, I did everything to go against the digital. I shot the lowest res I could get out of the camera; I didn’t shoot in the higher res. I think I shot in 2.8 or whatever. I played with color temperature. So I tried to screw up the image. I tried to manipulate the image in a way of counter. I used older lenses. It affected the color temperature of the sensor.
Do you find that your relationship with a director––like, an on-set workflow––changes between shooting on film and shooting digitally?
Absolutely. I think what’s happened in the digital world is: directors feel more in control because they think they’re seeing what they’re getting. And they are, in some ways, but that’s part of what we do. Some directors are better at it than others. But when you shoot a film, you go in with a visual style and a color palette, and then they try to change it in post. It doesn’t really serve [Laughs] what you were doing when you were shooting it. It’s not to say you can’t do that, but that’s anti-productive for what you’re doing on the set to create the story.
It’s interesting that your first time working with Larraín was digital and then you moved to film.
Right. But then I brought to him a monochromatic camera that Arriflex had built for me. I used lenses that were made in the late ‘30s; they were actually made for black-and-white film. Baltars. I did everything to implement the images that were used in film. The lenses and the latitude. The other thing is this EL Zone system, which works on Ansel Adams’ concept of 18% gray. By using that, I could be very specific about where I placed the highlights and the shadow detail. I had more of a mid-range with that, which I think felt more like film than digital.
Were you happy with how that process came out on El Conde?
Yeah. Yeah, extremely. What was interesting about it was, it was a small film––a Spanish-speaking film in Chile for the market there––so I was surprised that it had slowly gained the recognition outside of the Spanish-speaking market.
I wonder too, for a movie like Maria, I personally am not that interested in what awards lifetime a movie has. Maria is being put in the running for a Best Cinematography Oscar nomination. You’ve been through that circus a few times. I’m curious, for you, how it is––what you think the industry’s conception conception of cinematography is versus what it actually is.
Traditionally it’s been the big picture. Or day exteriors––you know, in Africa. I’m kidding. No, I’m just saying: cinematographers are the ones who nominate what films are going to be looked at by the whole Academy, right? So there’s probably a different perception about what your images are between cinematographers and the whole Academy. It’s hard for me to say what their interpretation of imagery is. It’s like, generally films shot in, let’s say, New York don’t get the recognition of films shot, like I say, on-location with sunsets. Why didn’t Gordon Willis… well, he wasn’t so loved by the people within the ASC because he was his own person. But, I mean––that’s pretty horrendous. I think one year, what was the film that won something––like, the Towering Inferno––over Gordon Willis? I think there was one year; it was, like, ludicrous.
I mean, we make the Oscars the ultimate decision-making process of what quality is. It’s not. You don’t want to say that. No, there are other factors that judge what someone’s work is. That’s what’s wonderful about this festival, and probably means the most to me: you’re being judged by an international audience of cinematographers with different sensibilities and different cultures. So that, to me, is the greatest recognition I could have.
I find it fascinating when actors talk about cinematography, where you realize they have more of a knowledge than you’d otherwise expect. Like there’s this one––I mean, this is kind of an older example––but in the documentary about the making of The Shining, Shelley Duvall talks about what kind of lens they’re going to use on her. And she seems to know what a 35 is going to do contra a 50. I don’t know if you found that to be the case.
Cate’s spoken a few times on my behalf and I was always remarkably impressed with her understanding––what she felt as an actress. She said she feels the… through the light and the lensing, it gives her a perspective of what she’s doing in a performance. I’ve never heard that before. That’s pretty remarkable, that she’s so aware of what that process is. Because they have to be in their world, you know?
You’re 78, you have this lifetime achievement. But it feels like every time you have a film, you can talk about something new you’ve done on it, which I find really admirable. And I wonder if there’s anything that’s still on some itemized list of things you want to do inside a cinematic space.
I think if I do this film in Taiwan.
What is that?
Midi Z, the director.
Oh, sure.
He’s really interesting, experimental.
I just saw the new movie in Tokyo.
Oh, yeah? How was that?
Pretty wild, entertaining.
The one he shot in China? I haven’t seen it. Anyway, I’m so taken by, you know… like, I always say, in different time periods, different places in the world are advancing the language of cinema. You know, I would say Eastern Europe in the 60s; Germany in the ‘70s; in France in the late ‘50s, ‘60s with the Nouvelle Vague; then the Italian Neorealist cinema after the war. Right now, I think Korea and China are really advancing the language of cinema for what I see, you know.
Like, I just saw this retrospective of Mark Lee Ping-bing. I was so taken by the imagery. So that’s what excites me: to shoot a film in Taiwan, to be part of something else. And I love, like, going to Vienna and working with Ulrich Seidl. I love to be in environments that I’ve never been, so I experience those environments through imagery that. Somewhat the tourist, but I also bring something to my own tourism. It allows me to explore images in a different context than I normally would.
Well, I think being a tourist is great for a cinematographer. You see a movie shot in New York by someone from Hong Kong. And suddenly New York doesn’t look like New York anymore. You’ve worked with Wim Wenders––half his career’s about going out to America and finding something new.
Right, right, right.
The Mark Lee Ping-bing styles often those very slow, lateral tracking shots. Do you envision something like that or is it more about ––
Well, I don’t know. You know, it’s going to depend on the story and I’m just getting into the story. So I’ll have to come up with a language for that story, but I’ll certainly be influenced by color and the lighting in that world. It’s hard.
Whatever the case, you working in Taiwan: I would love to see that.
Oh, we’ll see.
Maria is now in theaters and arrives on Netflix on Dec. 11