Going in to tonight's Oscars ceremony, it was a pretty foregone conclusion that Alfonso Cuarón's “Gravity” would gobble up a number of crafts categories. It has dominated each of the fields it has been nominated in thus far at the 86th annual Academy Awards, including the quartet of Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects.
Meanwhile, on his sixth nomination, celebrated director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki is finally an Oscar winner. He won the award for Best Cinematography for his work on the film.
Lubezki has been Cuarón's DP of choice for a number of years, and the lenser has picked up nominations for such films as “A Little Princess” and “Children of Men” over the years. Meanwhile, he's also developed a strong working relationship with visionary director Terrence Malick as of late. He was a favorite to win for “The Tree of Life” two years ago and was also nominated for “The New World” in 2005.
“Gravity” puts the audience on notice from the beginning with an extended 13-minute take laying out the visual vocabulary of the film. He spoke to HitFix about that shot in particular and the cinematography in general earlier this year.
“To me that shot is very powerful and tells the real story of the movie: that humans are tiny little specs in space and we've always been afraid of that,” he said at the time. “And it's very hard for us to understand eternity and infinity. These are the themes that I think are very strong in the movie.”
The film was nominated for a field co-leading 10 nominations overall, including Best Director and Best Picture.