Shooting for an Alternate Reality

Benoît Delhomme discusses his work on Ming-liang Tsai's What Time is it Over There?

by Phillip Williams | Published February 3, 2007

Benoit Delhomme

Benoît Delhomme, self-portrait in Taipei (cyan light)

We have all heard it said countless times: cinema is a collaborative art. Anyone who can deliver the goods at a high level of craft and work well as part of a team is likely to find a healthy amount of success is the industry. Such a person could be, like French Director of Photography Benoît Delhomme, a very busy artist, moving from one interesting project to another, collaborating with some of cinema´s most exciting, innovative moviemakers. Already, Benoit has worked with some of his country's finest, including Jean-Jacques Beineix, for whom he shot Mortal Transfer (2000) and Benoît Jacquot, whose latest picture, Sade (2000), was lensed by Delhomme last year. In the last decade, he has been traveling the globe making pictures like Miss Julie and The Loss of Sexual Innocence for Mike Figgis, The Winslow Boy for David Mamet and the highly acclaimed The Scent of Green Papya for first-time Vietnamese director Anh Hung Tran. Delhomme shot his latest film, What Time is it Over There?, for Taiwanese director Ming-liang Tsai, and is currently working with Doug Liman on his remake of The Bourne Identity, starring Matt Damon, Franka Potente, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen.

A few minutes with Delhomme reveals a man very much in love with his job. For him, each film is a new adventure; another chance to play with the form. What Time is it Over There?, is in many ways a 'difficult picture,' a film designed to frustrate the story expectations of the audience. Constructed as a series of master shots, the film is linked together by a sparse and oblique storyline. A painter in his off hours, Delhomme embraced the opportunity to shoot a film which demanded that he take his time with each camera set-up; that he use light to tell a parallel story, enhancing and underscoring the film´s minimalist narrative.

Phillip Williams (MM): In What Time is it Over There?, the camera is very static. Were you looking to add more weight to the image itself?

Benoît Delhomme (BD): Of course. When you hold the same frame for more than five minutes, you have to study the image much more than usual. Normally, when you are doing a scene, the director wants a lot of coverage and many angles to try and put the attention of the audience on one specific thing in the shot. Maybe by going to a close-up, for example. When you are holding a wide shot, as in What Time, you say, "Okay, the audience is going to see the scene only in a wide shot, so I have to give them all the information they need.' You have to study the composition a lot. It's like painting in a way.

MM: In that you're directing the eye?

BD: Exactly. I wanted to compose the lighting and the frame with this idea. I wanted the audience to know exactly where they have to look; to concentrate the light in the most important part of the frame; to make the shot readable without close-ups. It was something-I've never had enough time in the past to do my lighting. In this film, it was fantastic. I would spend three hours preparing the shot.

MM: Is that just the way Ming-liang Tsai works?

BD: Yes, since each scene was covered with one shot. If you are covering a scene with 20 shots, you're going to have less time. This director felt it was better to think before shooting. He would come in in the morning and we would talk for a half hour about the meaning of the scene. I never had this luxury on a film before. From there we would try one or two lenses. It was fantastic. Normally you fight for time to light the scene and everybody says, 'You have to work faster.' Often, the problem is that the director doesn't know which shot is the most important. When they shoot 20 shots, for example, 10 of them may end up in the garbage. On this film, each shot was more precious.

MM: Do you have ideas about how a film will be lensed before you start to shoot?

BD: Well, usually the director won't discuss this before he starts the film. It's rare, though sometime guys might say something like, 'I want all long lenses on the faces,' but it's not often. It has to come after, I think. On What Time Is It, we used two lenses: the 20mm and 24mm.

MM: How long do you like to go with a lens?

BD: I never go too long because I like to respect the natural look of things. I never go extreme with wide or long lenses. The cinema I like is close to what the eye sees; I don't like to transform reality too much. I think it comes from my French culture.

When I see something like a Wong Kar-Wai film, the way they try something new on every film, it's great. He did one film, for example, using only a 10mm lens, but I don't tend to be so extreme. Again, it's probably the culture I come from. The directors of photography I admire are people like Sven Nykvist. The films he did with Bergman don't use extreme wide or long lenses. The grammar in these films is simple and powerful.

MM: Would you like to try something a bit more extreme?

BD: I would say that I would like to do something bolder, like what Christopher Doyle, Wong Kar-Wai's DP does. Perhaps I could go extreme like that and still come back to a style like Sven Nykvist.

MM: You mentioned the grammar of film. Does such a concept exist for you?

BD: I don't know. Do you believe in film grammar?

MM: Sometimes you can say there is a clear reason for going to a close-up, or whatever. I think you create a new grammar for every film you make.

BD: Sure. When you see a film like Eisenstein´s Potemkin, you can see a real grammar- fantastic grammar. I saw it recently and I thought 'Wow, it's so modern.'

MM: Yes, it's incredible how modern it feels.

BD: Even the photography is fantastic. There was a real grammar; these guys were creating everything at the time. I think Eisenstein was sitting in his cutting room saying, 'This works; this doesn't work.' Personally, I would say there is such a thing as film grammar, but it's more like what Jean-Luc Godard would call a moral problem: if you are going to go in closer on an actor, you must know why, in a political sense, you are choosing to do that.

MM: How do you create a balance between what you see as a moviemaker, in terms of symbolism, and what the audience actually sees? The trend in commercial cinema is to make sure the audience always knows what's happening; that they always know what to feel. What Time Is It? is just the opposite. It's clear that the director is trying to say something, but I'm still left guessing a bit…

BD: Yes, this is true. I think he is in fact trying to show you another reality; to show you something you don't normally look at. Many of the scenes you see in his work would normally be cut. I think perhaps he wants to put the level of reflection of the audience very high. Perhaps it's asking too much.

MM: The audience gets smaller when you make those demands.

BD: He said to me, 'If I have to worry about the audience, I might as well stop making films.' Basically, he wants to show things about reality that are normally hidden. I like that idea.

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