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EIGIL BRYLD
“The reason we chose Fujifilm was to get that subtlety of the tonal range and also to get that subtlety of colours as well.”
continued from page 26
“I didn’t go to film school in Copenhagen,” he explains. “I came out of the underground, low budget filmmaking in the early 90s. That was very much an offspring of the Zentropa set-up run by Lars von Trier.
“But I started out wanting to be a documen- tary filmmaker. I didn’t know how to get into it. My parents are academics so I was only aware of the university way of going about things. Then I bumped into a friend who was studying documentary photography at Gwent College in South Wales.
“They had a two year filmmaking course which I went on, and it was really there that I started getting into cinematography. I watched lots of Kieslowski’s films, and Cronenberg’s. Terrence Malick’s Days Of Heaven [lit by Nestor Almendros] was defi- nitely the film that got me hooked and really opened my eyes to what could be done.”
Bryld identifies a distinct North European style in his work, so it is perhaps significant that his major break came in 1999 with Wisconsin Death Trip, a film that had distinct echoes of his homeland.
“Oddly enough, Wisconsin was mostly set- tled by Scandinavians and Germans. That film, visually, was very much based on the photogra- phy of Charles Van Schaik who did most of the original black and white photos that the film is structured around. I guess he must have been of Dutch origin, and the Dutch-Flemish sensibility is very similar to the Danish.”
Establishing a rapport with English director James Marsh, Bryld went on to light his next fea- ture, The King, in 2005. The contrast between the chilly plains of Wisconsin could not have been more marked in the intense heat of the Texan setting.
“That was a crucial narrative device, because it’s very much about poverty as well. If you live in Texas and you’re poor then you don’t have air conditioning. Basically, you get burnt by the sun. If you’re well off, you have nice air conditioning and everything is comfortable.
“So heat was something we spoke a lot about in pre-production, how we could get that sense of being burnt by the sun and have that come across. We also talked about how we could use the lighting to create the cooler and much more comfortable environment.”
By the time he and Marsh had come to renew their working relationship Bryld had already lit half a dozen other movies, including To Kill A King for Mike Barker. He also estab- lished a rapport with Julian Jarrold, first on Kinky Boots and then on the period drama Becoming Jane.
“I think I’ve been very fortunate in doing very different projects. All DPs have certain sen- sibilities and certain things that they like. I don’t know whether that’s a style or not, but my sensi- bility reaches beyond just making period films.
“After I’ve done a period film, I’m quite keen to do something gritty and urban. And if I’ve shot a film in the city I feel like doing something else. But at the same time, if I’m not the one who initiates the projects, it’s a question of navi- gating through what I’d like to do and then see- ing what’s available out there.”
To follow the genteel sensibilities of Jarrold’s Jane Austen drama, Bryld chose the edgy comedy In Bruges, director writer-director Martin McDonagh’s feature debut, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as hitmen having an existential crisis in the Belgian city.
With Ralph Fiennes in the cast too, the film serves as a reminder that a key part of any cine- matographer’s job is establishing a rapport with actors who may also be major movie stars.
“There has to be a chemistry,” he adds, “there’s nothing I consciously do, other than being aware of their personal space and under- standing what goes on in their heads. I’ve always had a good relationship with actors.”
Citing Nestor Almendros, and more particu- larly Gordon Willis as his heroes behind the camera, Bryld himself is a very modern breed of itinerant cinematographer. Like his fellow coun- tryman Marcel Zyskind, he has opted for a work- ing life that often takes him far from home.
“I don’t shoot many films here. I’ve chosen, at least for a while, to do English language films. I have a family, so I don’t want to end up going from one film to the other, so I have to be quite selective with what I do. I try and do one or two features per year at the most. I try and choose them very carefully. It’s been going towards British and American films. More than that it’s the working relationship and the script that is the deciding factor.”
And then there’s the appeal of a short job that refreshes the creative impulses a long shoot doesn’t always reach.
“I certainly like to do commercials and pop promos,” he agrees, “and documentaries as well. It’s rare in a feature film that you get the chance to reproduce Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper for instance. Commercials are a great playground where you can have a burst of energy into it.
“On feature films you have to conserve your energy, releasing it over three months, but com- mercials are like a controlled explosion of ener- gy. So, yeah, I do enjoy that.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Immortal was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573
Photos from top: a scene from Becoming Jane; shooting Wisconsin Death Trip with Director James Marsh, DP Eigil Bryld and Producer Maureen Ryan (photo Elly Griswold); Gael Garcia Bernal standing to attention in The King; a scene fromWisconsin Death Trip; Director James Marsh, Producer Milo Addica and Bryld on the set of The King
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