This month, two films that Matthew Libatique shot back-to-back arrive in theaters just a week apart from each other: Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest and Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing.
Despite sharing a cinematographer, a production designer (Mark Friedberg), and the same urban canvas, the films offer wildly divergent visions of what it means to live, struggle, and survive in New York.
Libatique has shot nearly all of Aronofsky’s films — the exception is The Wrestler — and has worked often with Lee, including on She Hate Me, Inside Man, Miracle at St. Anna, and Chi-Raq.
He has a distinct visual language with both directors.
“When you watch Highest 2 Lowest, there’s a lot of inserts and shots—single shots of items, inanimate objects that are meaningful. Maybe it’s a portrait of Toni Morrison or a Basquiat,” says Libatique.
“With Darren, it’s the visceralness. The same insert that Spike uses to give more depth to character and what that character is about, Darren uses the same shot to show the pain or the emotion of something.”
He distills the difference elegantly.
“Spike uses adjectives in his cinematic sentences, and Darren uses exclamation points.”
Matthew Libatique on Shooting Different Versions of New York City
The two films’ New York City protagonists — Denzel Washington’s David King in Highest 2 Lowest and Austin Butler’s Hank in Caught Stealing — also helped Libatique recreate the films’ respective looks.
“David is a rags-to-riches story, born and raised in New York City. Hank’s a transplant,” says Libatique. “They’re both New Yorkers and try to make it their own little town, but at the end of the day, theirs are completely different experiences.”
The differences extend to the characters’ relationships with the city.
“David comes from the Bronx. I really believe you can feel that he’s grown up in the city, but he’s detached,” says Libatique. “When you watch Highest 2 Lowest, just like in the original, the placement of where he lives is detached from the rest of the city.”
Highest 2 Lowest, based on Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 High and Low, shot over 50 days, largely at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios, where Friedberg’s team recreated a full penthouse set for David’s luxurious DUMBO apartment.
Much of the movie’s action takes place in David’s home, as he looks down on his kingdom, past the Brooklyn Bridge to the Financial District and his company, Stackin’ Hits Records.
“That building is part of Denzel’s character,” Libatique says. “It literally symbolizes the main character and is our house on top of the mountain.”
The fast-moving Caught Stealing, meanwhile,represents a tonal departure for Aronofsky, whose films typically plumb psychological depths. It’s the story of a ballplayer-turned-bartender, played by Butler, who gets pulled into the city’s seedy criminal underworld.
Yet despite this shift, “cinematography-wise, the filmmaking, and the craft of it, is very much the same,” says Libatique.
The film immerses viewers in the gritty, oddball-filled East Village of the late 1990s. Scenes also unfold in New York City’s Chinatown, Flushing Meadows and Brighton Beach.
“There was going to be a distinction between the two films regardless, just by virtue of the wealth gap between the main characters,” says Libatique.
“If I didn’t do anything differently, if I used the same lensing and the same camera, quite honestly, the movies would have been different by virtue of the design, and the design was ultimately motivated by their characters in the writing.”
Authenticity in Highest 2 Lowest and Caught Stealing
Both films draw inspiration from New York cinema classics. In Highest 2 Lowest, a sequence at Yankee Stadium’s 161st Street platform pays homage to William Friedkin’s The French Connection, as A$AP Rocky’s character, Yung Felon, and Washington’s David engage in a cat-and-mouse game reminiscent of the 1971 thriller.
Caught Stealing, meanwhile, includes nods to After Hours, Martin Scorsese’s antsy 1985 New York comedy.
“After Hours opens with a dolly shot where the camera goes through an office space, hinges around, and lands at Griffin Dunne’s desk,” says Libatique. “There’s a move in Caught Stealing that’s a little bit of a callback to that.”
The film also shares After Hours’ ensemble approach, with Butler’s Hank encountering “this litany of other people who embody the city.”
“Living in New York, you just meet one character after another, whether they’re at the post office or the laundromat or at the bar,” notes Libatique. “You’re always meeting somebody with a unique point of view.”
Lee and Aronofsky share an obsession with authenticity, Libatique says.
He notes that Lee “demanded to shoot on the actual real platform next to Yankee Stadium, which is not an easy task.”
Aronofsky, meanwhile, insisted on recreating businesses long gone.
“He’s like, ‘Well, Benny’s Burritos used to be here and Kim’s Video used to be here,’ so we rebuilt their facades,” says Libatique.
An early promotional still for Caught Stealing shows Butler and Matt Smith’s character, Russ, with the Mets’ Citi Field in the background. But Citi Field didn’t open until 2009, the same year Shea Stadium was demolished.
Asked if Citi Field appears in the movie, Libatique laughs — and explains that Aronosky’s extreme commitment to period accuracy included transforming the new ballpark.
“It’s going to look awfully like Shea Stadium when you see the film,” he says.
Highest 2 Lowest is in now in theaters from A24. Caught Stealing arrives Friday from Sony Pictures Releasing.
Main image: Matthew Libatique on the set of Caught Stealing. Photo by Niko Tavernise. Sony Pictures Releasing.