The Butler and The Master
Good morning: In today's edition of The Industry, we look at:
Francis Ford Coppola’s secret weapon, Alfonso Cuarón's revelations, Hollywood's voice, Liza is terrific, and 20,000 days.
Let’s go!
THE MASTER
Mihai Mălaimare Jr. is the cinematographer behind Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024).
I first came across Mălaimare’s work at a 70mm screening of The Master (which he also DP’d) in NYC in 2012.
There was a hypnotic vividness to his imagery.
The blues of the ocean that frame Joaquin Phoenix as he languishes atop a Navy Carrier (still) were so real you could taste the salt.
And when Philip Seymour Hoffman forces Pheonix to answer a series of questions without blinking, I was sucked into the rich shadows (still) and sat in rapture.
Mălaimare, who got his start in his native Romania, got his first break lensing Coppola’s Youth Without Youth (2007).
He has lensed the director’s last four films:
Youth Without Youth (2007)
Tetro (2009)
Twixt (2011)
Megalopolis (2024)
Mălaimare shares how he developed his visual style working with Coppola:
“Francis wanted to try something in the Ozu style, where the camera doesn’t move at all unless it’s for a really good purpose. That intrigued me, and it landed in my comfortable area because it related so much to my still photography background: how do you tell a story within a static frame?”
Mălaimare continued:
“When the camera is not moving at all, it’s closer to a still photograph, where the viewer has time to study the frame and absorb what’s in the shot, so composition is that much more important. But it was Francis’ idea and it carried through in the second film (Tetro 2009) and the third film (Twixt 2011) we shot together. That’s what it’s like working with Francis: he comes up with some really crazy idea that usually intrigues everybody. Even if it seems hard or impossible at the beginning, it evolves in such an amazing thing by the end.”
There's no question that the 10-year-long self-funded, highly polarizing production process of Megalopolis draws parallels to Apocalypse Now (1979), lensed by the three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. It seems like Coppola saw into Mălaimare's heart of darkness and groomed him over three films for this late-in-life magnum opus.
We look forward to seeing it on the most mega screen available.
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