Dodging his own shadows, capturing Angelina Jolie differently to illustrate the arc of Maria Callas’ life and loves and having only four hours in Milan’s world-famous La Scala opera house to capture a key scene were among the challenges cinematographer Ed Lachman focused on while shooting Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín’s Maria.
Steven Knight’s screenplay is a creative imagining and psychological portrait of the legendary soprano Maria Callas, largely set in the 1970s near the end of her life in Paris, when she had lost her voice and tries to regain it. It also depicts scenes from her youth in Greece during the Second World War, her ill-fated affair with Aristotle Onassis and a meeting with John F Kennedy in New York City.
Maria marks Lachman and Larrain’s second collaboration following last year’s El Conde which earned Lachman his third Oscar nomination after his work on Todd Haynes’ Carol and Far From Heaven.
The 41-day Maria shoot took place in Paris for four to five days mostly for exteriors, a few days in Greece (at the Apollo Theatre in Pyrgos, and the yacht formerly owned by Aristotle Onassis, Christina O) with the majority of the rest in Budapest, Hungary.
As was the case with El Conde, Lachman is the sole member of the Maria team – cast and crew – to receive an Oscar nomination.
The director of photography – whose career spans more than five decades, and has yet to win the Academy Award – spoke to Screen at the Cameraimage film festival in Poland last November.
What was your response to Steven Knight’s screenplay?
The film becomes an opera about Maria Callas, more than just a biopic or a biographical study, especially because Steven writes in such a poetic way. There are two factors visually in the film. One I call a moving proscenium, a moving stage. Pablo likes working with wider lenses where we’re moving through the space with her either following her or discovering where she is, like in her bedroom, the way people see an opera on stage. The other aspect visually is the use of colours, and the way I use gels and mix colour temperatures. It creates a psychological effect.
Can you give an example of your use of colour?
The feeling in her apartment, she’s in this nest of warmth, but it’s invaded by a cooler colour. I use green because generally people feel green is not a complimentary colour for people’s flesh tone.
How do you approach working with Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas?
I wanted audiences to believe that this was the world that she lived in, this heightened reality. Music has rhythm, but images have a rhythm too. There’s an evolution of her character: the way she’s going to look at the end of the film has to be different to her flashbacks. It was always a concern for me that I would capture the character arc visually.
What was the most challenging scene?
When we shot in La Scala we only had four hours. I ended up working with the crew from La Scala for the stage lighting and my film crew worked with them for the auditorium. We didn’t know how much we could get done in that amount of time. We took 45 minutes to set up and then shot for as much of the time left as we could.
What part of the shoot worked best for you?
The scene that I really love is the night scene, when she’s near the record player listening to her music, and then it cuts to a stage performance, and then it cuts back when there’s the quiet moments with her. Pablo made up those scenes at the time, they weren’t scripted, and we shot it in the moment.
Did you come across anything new working on this film that you haven’t in your career to date?
When I’m shooting with natural light or with the lights on the crane through the windows, I’m facing into the room. It’s direct light, and I would have to avoid my own shadow. I have never had that before.
Do you prefer film or digital?
It depends on the project. It’s not pejorative that I have to shoot with film. Period films lend themselves more to film because you’re referencing that time period the way you saw images. It’s getting harder and harder to shoot on film because the infrastructure around it isn’t there. The film stock for Maria had to be driven from London, because they don’t trust the X-ray in airports.
What are you going to do next?
Pablo has talked to me about another project, and I’ve been offered a film in Taiwan with a director I respect, Midi Z. I haven’t decided.
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