Dariusz Wolski: Last News

Will Tizard Contributor Recreating epic battle scenes was just part of the challenge in filming “Napoleon” with director Ridley Scott, says Polish-born cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who screened the grand-scale biopic at the Camerimage cinematography festival in Poland on Friday. Getting the realism needed to capture the vast brutality of the Battle of Austerlitz or Waterloo, says Wolski, depends on exhaustive planning and coordination, of course, but also some impressive juggling.

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon marches into cinematic battle with the bluster and confidence that comes with a reported $200-million budget and Sir Ridley’s decades-deep track record of well-mounted action epics.All that money and prestige is visible onscreen in the film’s far-flung locations, hundreds of extras, delectable period costumes and decor, and, as advertised, several massively-scaled scenes of battle, on land and sea, circa 1789 to 1815.Legions of infantry and cavalry clash on various rolling hills of Europe, shot in icy, desaturated blues and grays by Dariusz Wolski, Scott’s cinematographer on his last nine films (though not his next one, Gladiator 2, being lensed by Gladiator d.p. John Mathieson).Against vast fields of green or snow-covered grasses, and CGI-enhanced masses of combatants, soldiers’ coats flash a red that’s many shades brighter than the blood that flows and bursts violently across the screen.The filmmakers spare no visual detail in depicting the bodily devastation of hand-to-hand armed combat — death by bayonet, point-blank gunfire, horse hooves, or long-range artillery.Death here is bloody, disgusting, and woefully unnecessary, but it’s also the main currency of war, and this movie revels in the loud, explosive spectacle of war far more enthusiastically than it casts its feebly critical eye at the men who clamor for it.Above all else, the film renders tribute to Napoleon Bonaparte, portrayed by Oscar-winner Joaquin Phoenix as a shrewd but coarse, fearless, petulant, glowering egomaniac who rises to imperial power fighting and winning wars.

Will Tizard Contributor Like the cinematography sector overall this year, the profession’s prime annual festival, Poland’s Camerimage, has come through major challenges in 2023, says the event’s founder, Marek Zydowicz. Launching in the historic town of Torun on Nov.

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