Certainly one of the most distinct and talented cinematographers working today is Bruno Delbonnel. Most first sparked to the French cinematographer’s work on the 2001 film Amélie, and he subsequently lent his talents to films like A Very Long Engagement, Across the Universe, and Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, Big Eyes, and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. And when the Coen Brothers found themselves in need of a new cinematographer due to Roger Deakins’ absence, they enlisted Delbonnel to shoot the gorgeous Inside Llewyn Davis (and he’s also shooting their upcoming anthology series).

Most recently, Delbonnel teamed up with visionary filmmaker Joe Wright for an unlikely choice of project: an intimate drama about Winston Churchill. Putting Wright and Delbonnel to the task was an inspired choice, as Darkest Hour stands as one of the year’s best films, which extends to Delbonnel’s cinematic and striking cinematography, which works in concert with Dario Marianelli’s pulsating score to tremendous results.

With Darkest Hour now playing in limited release before going wide in the United States on December 22nd (it opes in the UK on January 12, 2018), I recently got the chance to speak with Delbonnel about his stunning work in the film. He talked about his collaboration with director Joe Wright and how the two worked together to zero in on the dual personality of Churchill, and he also discussed the challenge of shooting Gary Oldman’s transformative performance as Churchill in a way that kept the magic alive. Additional, as I’m a massive fan of Delbonnel’s work on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I had to ask him about his collaboration with David Yates on that film and the cinematographer kindly indulged my fascinating.

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Image via Focus Features

Delbonnel is a monumental talent and his work on Darkest Hour is terrific. I could have spoken with the cinematographer for four more hours, but below you’ll find our full—and all-too-brief—conversation.

I believe this was your first project with Joe, so I was kind of curious, how did that courtship go? How did you come to be shooting this film?

BRUNO DELBONNEL: In fact Joe called me three or four years ago when he was prepping Pan. Seamus McGarvey was not available and so he asked me if I could shoot it for him but I was working with Tim Burton on Miss Peregrine. So I couldn't do it and then he called me for this one, he said Seamus is not available again so would you mind shooting it, and I read the script and I said yeah, okay. Why not?

I'm always interested in the early conversations between the director and the cinematographer. So what were your early discussions with Joe like about the visual approach to the project?

DELBONNEL: I think the first thing was in some ways he had to convince me to do this movie. It was a lot about people talking about the politics of England and how to save the world in some ways, and so Joe came to Paris and he told me that what really interested him was the double personality of Churchill. How this guy had a lot of doubt and was a leader as well but with a lot of failure behind it. So it suddenly opened a lot of things for me like, ‘Okay, so its more about a person than the moment in the world history.’ Then I got interested. Then we start talking about maps and how those people are playing with soldiers and human life and looking at the world from God's point of view somewhat, and this spoke to me as well. So it was an early conversation we had, and then we kind of developed a general concept of what the movie could look like.

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Image via Focus Features

Joe is know to be a very cinematic director and the camera work in his films is striking but this project, it's basically a succession of scenes of people talking in rooms but yet I think you guys succeed in making it feel cinematic without it being kind of overbearingly so or too showy. Were you guys talking about that balance while you were shooting, kind of trying to find a happy medium?

DELBONNEL: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, Joe was really aware that we had more than 20 minutes of people talking, shooting around table, talking about what to do. So he was really aware of how dangerous it could have been for the audience. There was one scene that I think that’s 10 minutes long, it was 15 pages. So both of us started to discuss that. How can we sort it out? In fact the plan was going the opposite way. It was just like, how can we make the scene more interesting? So instead of finding the solution within the room—when people are talking and they are sitting, there is not much that you can do unless you're moving the camera in a very obnoxious way. In a way that has no sense what so ever and I really don't like pushing too much when people are talking and suddenly the camera is pushing in and you say, ‘Oh God. The guy is saying something interesting. That's why the camera is pushing,’ which annoys me a lot. So we said, ‘Okay, it's much more interesting to work around those scenes and to find a way just to make those scenes interesting and dynamic.’ Then there is a pause when those guys are talking in these rooms. So it was kind of developing a musical score within the movie, within the script.

Yeah, I mean Dario Marianelli’s score in this movie is one of my favorites of the year and I think this score and the cinematography worked together in kind of this dance in a way, which is kind of amazing going that the score comes afterwards.

DELBONNEL: Yeah. Exactly. I agree with you.

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Image via Focus Features

I was also curious. When you're framing a character like Winston Churchill, who's larger than life, and then you have a performance as spectacular as Gary's. How are you setting up those shots? You can almost feel his personality bursting through the screen at times and its not exactly like framing kind of any other character. This guy is huge.

DELBONNEL: To tell you the truth I don't think about this. That’s the problem with any biopic you’re doing, but we're not doing a biopic. I don't feel this movie is a biopic. It's just like, two months in the life of Winston Churchill. So I don't know what's before, I don't know what's next. What is interesting for me is only those two months, which are within the script and it could be anyone, in some ways. This guy was larger than life like you said but you could say that Joey's larger than life. You have this double personality or triple personality and that's what is interesting, is when you try to play with them. So what was more complicated was shooting Gary Oldman as Churchill. That was the challenge and because even, you have to have in mind that the audience is looking at Gary Oldman being Winston Churchill so you have to help Gary to make the audience forget about it and that's my job in some way. The question is how can I find a way just to cause the audience to forget that it's Gary Oldman with prosthetics? It's not about Churchill.

So, did you have conversations with Gary about that? Of kind of framing or was that more you and Joe kind of figuring out how to shoot him?

DELBONNEL: No. Gary I think trusted us. It was more about finding the shot with Joe more than anything else. I'm not a big fan of closeups, because I think that's right in your face. So we did closeups obviously but it was more about putting the character in a situation more than trying to capture what he was saying in closeups. I'm not a big believer of closeups, especially when you have a lot of prostetics. But it was establishing a situation. In fact, it was blocking the scene with Joe in a way that we can shoot it from a wide perspective or mid-shot or something and we have to go in a closeup if we need to but trying to avoid it. So we're not showing Gary Oldman, we are just showing an actor within a situation, which is I think much more interesting, for me anyway.

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Image via Focus Features

I think that absolutely comes through and one of my favorite shots in the film is of Churchill in the phone booth as the camera pulls back and just underscores his loneliness and isolation. How did that shot come together?

DELBONNEL: That's definitely Joe idea. That's what I like about Joe. He's not shy about those kinds of things because when he said I want a lot of black around him I asked him, are you sure? It's really something different from what we did. He said yeah, that's what I want and I think it works, and he was right. I mean it was a very interesting idea because it goes against this kind of idea that we're, as you said, shooting somebody who is bigger than life. So the movie doesn't have to follow the reality, you know? There is a lot of things that are really operatice in the movie. It's a vision. It’s one guy’s specific vision of Churchill and I'm sure the historians are not a big fan of this vision.

I was going to say. It almost feel like it’s expressionistic at points and operatic I think is the perfect word for it.

DELBONNEL: Yeah I think that's it. Yeah. It's really an opera and a very sad opera because it's war but that's opera. Then, obviously Joe is on top of those kinds of ideas. I don't have to bring those idea. He brings them.

Well I have to say one of my favorite films of yours is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which I think is incredible and very much stands out from the rest of the franchise in a really great way and so I've always been curious. I've always wanted to talk to you about it. How did you and David Yates hit upon that very striking soft look for the film and was the studio nervous at all?

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Image via Focus Features

DELBONNEL: I think they were (laughs). I think they were very nervous, but it's a very long story. I didn't want to do Potter. Alfonso Cuaron asked me to do The Prisoner of Azkaban and I thought it was too big for me, I was too young. And then David called me for Order of the Phoenix and I said no, I'm not interested. But I thought the major point was when they sent me Half-Blood Prince, I was not sure I wanted to do it but they showed me the set and I fell in love with those sets because I think Stuart Craig is a genius and I really wanted to light those sets, basically more than the story. That's what I told the producer and [director] David Yates, I said I think Hogwarts is a character in the series and I should light Hogwarts as a character more than anything. More than a background. And they said, ‘Okay, that's an interesting concept,’ and they let me do it.

That’s great. Going back to Darkest Hour I was also curious about the House of Commons scenes where you have all of these characters and you have this big shining light shining through and I imagine that posed a pretty big technical challenge. How did you go about shooting those?

DELBONNEL: We built it on stage so it was fairly easy. So I have enough room just to put the light where I wanted so it's basically 20 K’s, bold beam and very hard light in soft boxes. So it's kind of yeah, it's not a big challenge. The big challenge was Westminster Hall, which was the real one, the Westminster Hall when he leaves at the end and there was not much I could do. This one was challenging.

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Image via Focus Features

I know that Joe has a very strong like cinematic look in terms of what he wants to shoot and stuff. What was your working relationship from that standpoint? Did he come to the table with kind of stronger visual ideas than other directors that you've worked with?

DELBONNEL: No. I mean he had really different visual ideas and he's definitely not as strong as Tim Burton, Tim Burton has his own world and the Coen Brothers have their own world as well, they are very visual in a very different way so that's what interests me. It's working with guys who have a very different vision and they have a vision, you see. So when you have a director who doesn't have a vision it's very hard for me. It doesn't mean that the guy is not a good, he's not a bad director. It’s just they aren’t enabled to share something with me. So I have a lot of difficulties with those kinds of person. But Joe has a strong vision, Tim has a strong vision, the Coens have a strong vision, David Yates has a strong vision. That’s what’s great. And sometimes you disagree. I disagreed a lot with Joe at some times. I said, ‘Nah, I don't think it's a good idea Joe. We can probably do something better than that,’ and the thing is he's a good listener and sometimes he said, ‘No, that's exactly what I want,’ and I say, ‘Okay’, and sometimes he says show me and then he says, ‘Oh, yeah, wow, okay, that's more interesting. Let's do it.’ So as long as it's not a conflict that's a fascinating process.

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Image via Focus Features