Ever
since his work on David Fincher’s 1995 modern neo-noir classic Se7en, the Iranian-French director of
photography Darius Khondji became instantly recognized as one of the film
industry’s finest cinematographers the movie world had ever seen. Born in Tehran, Iran to an Iranian father and
French mother, the soon-to-be cinema giant moved to France during his youth
where he was introduced to the world of moviegoing.
Quickly
inspired to start making his own films, Khondji generated a handful of Super-8
short films before making the leap to the United States to study at UCLA, NYU
and the International Center of Photography.
It was during this time two of his film professors (one of whom taught
Martin Scorsese) persuaded Khondji to follow his true vocation as a film
cinematographer.
Having
worked as an assistant to other cinematographers in the early 1980s, Khondji
found work among music videos and commercials before his first big break in
1989 with the French film Embrasse-Moi,
gradually working his way up to a working relationship with Jean-Pierre Jeunet
whom he would shoot three features for.
It wasn’t until Se7en with his
unique silver-retention developmental process that his ornate and precise
mastery of the film camera caught the attention of the film world and notably The Hollywood Reporter author Jordan
Mintzer (Conversations with James Gray),
who with Khondji fashioned what has shaped up to be the finest and most
comprehensive film book of the year, Conversations
with Darius Khondji.
A
bilingual English-French hardbound book featuring interviews with Khondji as
well as many of his collaborators including directors Woody Allen, Bernardo
Bertolucci, James Gray and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, numerous photographers and
fellow technicians as well as distinguished actress Isabelle Huppert’s own
testimonies about working with Khondji, the amount of materials contained
therein are overwhelming from the moment you open upon the first page. Released exclusively through French publisher
Synecdoche, the “Cinema Bible” as
called by Variety is not available through conventional retailers. With the one and only US release given a
limited run through Metrograph in New York, I tracked down a copy sold through Synecdoche and the rest is history.
Loaded
with on-set photographs, storyboards, Polaroids, annotated screenplays and
reprinted snapshots from every picture he has ever worked on, the book unfolds like
a classroom text, full of visual information with the reader gradually adopting
much of the freely spoken industry terminology.
But the text isn’t impenetrable to newcomers to film eager to learn
where a man of Khondji’s stature got his starting point in appreciating as well
as creating film. In other words, the
book can be picked up by film or photography students as well as those even
mildly interested in film and everyone will come away feeling refreshed or finding
their inner cinematic bug energized.
Dense,
immensely detailed and passionately written, Conversations with Darius Khondji is as essential a textbook of
film as any ever produced. While Khondji
himself doesn’t refer to himself as having his own style, favoring the notion
of being completely in service to the auteur directing the film, fans of the
cinematographer’s work will notice idiosyncrasies in the lighting, soft
monochromatic colors and ability to paint shimmers of light in almost total
darkness.
For
the industry insider it’s an indelible guide to learning the art and trade of
becoming a cinematographer while also discovering what it truly means to digest
and appreciate cinema. For the average
cinephile like myself, reading Mr. Khondji speaking about his life’s work and
how he rose to the occasion of becoming the working professional he is today is
inspiring and enthralling to behold. There’s
so much here it will take you a lifetime to absorb it all.
Khondji
remains well at work on film today, having recently shot Nicolas Winding Refn’s
television series Too Old to Die Young as
well as the Safdie brothers’ newly released thriller Uncut Gems. If Conversations with Darius Khondji
teaches readers anything it expresses the importance of a cinematographer’s role
in the art of film production, how he interprets a filmmaker’s vision and
translates it to the screen using his own personal set of skills and tools, and
how the cinematographer in painting a picture is as much of a visual artist as
the film director.
Unquestionably
the most detail-oriented book dedicated to a cinematographer yet released, Conversations with Darius Khondji represents
a treasure trove of cinema knowledge that will take you a lifetime to wade
through but little to no time at all to appreciate its grandeur. Film books this lovingly made don’t come
around often.
--Andrew Kotwicki