The beauty of Robert Elswit's cinema
Sunday, August 16, 2020 at 10:00PM 
Our odyssey through the 2005 Best Cinematography Oscar nominees is reaching its end. After Dion Beebe, Rodrigo Prieto, and Wally Pfister, we've arrived at the filmography of Robert Elswit.
Mostly known for his collaborations with Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Elswit is a master craftsman whose control of the camera is virtually unparalleled. Whether in choreographed motion or stately stillness, his images sing with meaning and ravishing beauty. More specifically, he's got a penchant for expressive dolly shots, wide-angle lenses, and shoots sunlight in ways that make it bleed white while his shadows, especially at night, glow in hues of blue and even purple. Usually, when you see Elswits name on the credits, you can expect a handsome movie regardless of the rest of the project's quality.
Here are 10 highlights from Robert Elswit's filmography…
DESERT HEARTS (1985)
One of Elswit's early masterpieces was this independent film about the love affair of two women in the Reno of the late 50s. Despite a tiny budget, Desert Hearts looks gorgeous, having been shot in a style devised by director Donna Deitch and inspired by still photography that showed western iconography under a romantic light. Through Elswit's exquisite cinematography, the rapturous feeling of blossoming passion bleeds into the images, turning a rainstorm into the perfect setting for a first kiss and a squalid hotel room into a chamber of romantic ecstasy.
Desert Hearts is available to stream on HBO Max, the Criterion Channel, Fubo TV, Kanopy, DirecTV, Showtime, and realeyz. You can also rent it from Amazon and Apple iTunes.
HARD EIGHT (1996)
The first time Robert Elswit and PTA worked together is a small triumph of existential dread crystalized in celluloid. Almost unbearably cold, Hard Eight unfolds in severe tableaux that drain any glamour out of the Las Vegas setting. While it mostly unfolds at night, inside crowded casinos, the daytime of Hard Eight can be even bleaker than the comfort of the dark. As captured by Elswit, the desert sun bleaches the characters' sallow visages until they all look like greying corpses.
Hard Eight is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, CBS, Crackle, Tubi TV, Popcornflix, and Pluto TV. You can also rent it from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997)
For PTA's second feature, Elswit's cinematography carefully delineates the rise and fall of Boogie Nights' crew of pornographers. The optimism of the 1970s is reflected in the lensing, with bright colors, sprawling movement, and lush lighting making everything look more impressive than it really is. When the 80s arrive with video and the fall from grace for all involved, so does the look of the picture change. The colors lose intensity and the camera choreography is increasingly shabbier, its shakes like a death rattle.
Boogie Nights is available on Fubo TV, Showtime, and DirecTV. You can also rent it from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (2002)
PTA's Punch-Drunk Love might very well be Elswitt's most beautiful film. It certainly features some of the best uses of wide-angle lenses in the DP's career as well as his most painterly deployment of saturated shades. Every frame looks like some lost masterpiece of 20th century Modernism. It's loneliness made into pictorial expression, color-blocking as the idiom of despair, complete with anxiety-inducing compositions that slowly morph into epic murals of oddball love.
Punch-Drunk Love is available to stream on HBO Max, HBO Now, HBO Go, Hoopla, and DirecTV. You can also rent it from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK (2005)
As it happens with many great cinematographers, for Elswit, the key to capturing AMPAS' attention was to do a modern prestige picture in silvery monochrome. That's not to say that George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck is only visually appealing because of its choice of black-and-white instead of color. Quite the contrary, Robert Elswit is a magician with light and he uses TV monitors, windows, and architectural frames to fragment his images into countless screens. It's amazing how many ways the DP finds to shoot featureless white rooms.
Good Night, and Good Luck is available to rent from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
SYRIANA (2005)
Syriana is a political thriller with a nearly incomprehensible plot, whose byzantine twists and turns are made visually appealing by Elswit's somber cinematography. The confusion isn't accidental, though, but a canny translation of the twisted nature of international politics. Similarly, Elswit's lensing may be beautiful, but it's also purposefully detached, often dwarfing people against the landscape, showing them through layers of reflection or hiding them in murky shadows.
Syriana is available to rent from Apple iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007)
Few people win Oscars for their best work, but Robert Elswit did it.
PTA's There Will Be Blood is the American Dream twisted out of shape, its skin slashed open so that we can purview the vileness inside. The images tell that tale, often more than the script. That being said, it's easy to imagine a lesser DP falling into the error of postcard prettiness when dealing with this project. However, Elswit's work is never so uninspired. Even when shooting something like an oil fire, he searches for layers of meaning beneath the flashy beauty, dissecting the shot until he's found the totemic power hidden beneath the surface. The fiery disaster is an almost religious experience, its glowing flames later echoed by the sunlight making its way into Eli's church through a cross-shaped window.
There Will Be Blood is available to stream on Netflix and DirecTV. You can also rent it from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL (2011)
Brad Bird's Mission: Impossible movie is a miracle of sleek, glossy, blockbuster cinematography that still manages to have weight and not be too varnished for its own good. The climb up the glassy skyscraper is an especially magnificent set-piece that Elswit shoots like a kaleidoscope or perhaps a work of geometric abstractionism, using the reflections of Tom Cruise to enhance the sense of perilous height. Just one glance at the frames can give one vertigo-induced dizziness.
His work on the following Mission: Impossible flick, the operatic Rogue Nation, is similarly excellent, though it's more colorful than the metallic wonder of Ghost Protocol.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, DirecTV, and Epix. You can also rent it from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
INHERENT VICE (2014)
Instead of mimicking the exact look of the 70s American cinema, Robert Elswit evokes its textures for PTA's Inherent Vice. The colors are too bright for mere mimesis, the compositions too off-kilter, but the tempest of grain transports the viewer to times gone by. Despite the movie's visual excellence, the shooting was uncomfortable for a lot of the involved, and Elswit has confessed to not enjoying himself during it. He's said that it's unlikely he'll work with Anderson again. The cinematographer went so far as to characterize their professional relationship as a bad marriage.
Inherent Vice is available to rent from Apple iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Youtube, and others.
NIGHTCRAWLER (2014)
The most inspired of the Dan Gilroy-Robert Elswit collaborations, Nightcrawler was shot both on digital and film. For the day scenes, Elswit captured the harsh sun of Los Angeles with celluloid, keeping the sleekness of digital video for the night sequences. There, he pushes the format into an uncanny register of plastic smoothness, enhancing Jake Gyllenhaal's reptilian performance and making the artificial lights that paint the darkness into beacons of doom. It's both ugly and perfect for the story being told.
Nightcrawler is available to stream on Netflix. You can also rent it from Amazon, Google Play, Youtube, and others.
What's your favorite work of the great Robert Elswit? If so, how many Oscar nods would you have given him over the years?
Reader Comments (14)
A shame he and PTA had a falling out during Inherent Vice. They made quite a formidable team, and I can't say I've been a fan of some of the projects he's bee on since(A Judd Apatow movie, really?).
The beauty of Cláudio Alves‘ writing.
Preemptive: I'm not a fan. That's not my comment.
His best is There Will Be Blood without a doubt. Such striking film.
I didn't know he shot Desert Hearts. That is an excellent film as the dude is an amazing photographer.
The way the light falls on Moore after the hearing in Boogie Nights is one of my favourite shots.
His style is, uh, not always my thing, although he's worked on quite a mix of films I like a good deal (from Boys to The River Wild to Syriana and Michael Clayton).
Nightcrawler is my favorite work of his, with Punch-Drunk Love the runner-up, and it's a shame he wasn't nominated for either one of those.
"Boogie Nights" is such a re-watchable film the first hour is specially pleasurable.
There Will Be Blood is a great Oscar win.
Surprised you didn't include Magnolia in your top 10.
I wasn't aware that he did so many movies with Curtis Hanson in the 90s. Bad Influence had a great look.
I remember seeing DESERT HEARTS way back when it first came out and thought, "damn. For a low budget indie film, the cinematography here is quietly spectacular." There's one simple shot where you see light falling on the floor of a motel room that's one of the most evocative images of its era.
I know who you are and I'm pressing charges.
He won his oscar in a seriously stacked year. I'd have gone for Deakins, but wowsa. The collective brillliance from that quintet might be unmatched.
There Will Be Blood is his crowning achievement. Amazing he was able to win for it. I had no idea about the PTA falling out.. such a shame (although I found Inherent Vice basically incomprehensible).
I re-watched Punch-Drunk Love last month and I was amazed how plain and simple, and frankly awful, every room was... and how exquisite the film is, really it's like painting with light, every frame, gorg.