Another excellent DP who has been under-recognized despite consistently giving us outstanding work is Rodrigo Prieto, whose most recent work was done on a moderately successful film called Argo. He has accumulated quite the resume over the past couple of decades, including Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution with Ang Lee, Babel and 21 Grams with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, 25th Hour with Spike Lee, Frida with Julie Taymor, and worked with Martin Scorsese on the upcoming Wolf of Wall Street.
That’s quite the track record, and with a remarkably diverse group of filmmakers. And yet every one of those films is memorable for how much its imagery contributed to the experience of its story. Brokeback Mountain in particular is a beautiful example of a kind of throwback, classical Hollywood love story told from a contemporary history context, employing the traditional visual dichotomy of boundless country landscapes representing freedom and crippling, claustrophobic city scenes where the characters are inhibited by society and its mores. Sometimes seemingly simple cinematography can contain more meaning than all the words spoken in an entire film.
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