This article is part of a series of interviews with influential cinematographers at the Polish International Film Photography Arts Film Festival in Petergosz, Poland, in November 2016.
Anthony Dodd Manto from Copenhagen made a splash in the film industry in the late 1990s with his frenzied photographic style in the subversive Dogma 95 opening film The Celebration (1998), directed by Thomas Vantiberg. In keeping with Dogmar's rejection of artificial control and his advocacy of spontaneity, Dodd Manto controls the camera like a hunter in Family Celebration, observing and using body movements at the center of the film to restore the emotional dynamics of a dysfunctional family.
This idea of conveying mental states through formal elements runs through the subject of Dodd Manto's work; from his gloomy and expressionist interpretation of emotions such as sadness, lust, and madness in antichrist (2009) directed by Lars von Trier; to snowden (2016), the subtle and disturbing expression of political paranoia and anxiety (Snowden, directed by Oliver Stone, Snowden, Tell the story of this controversial American computer expert who has attracted public attention by leaking the NSA's illegal surveillance tactics).
Dodd Manto's powerful, improvised photographic style in Mumbai's Slumdog millionaire (2008), through the use of light, understated digital techniques, and emotional intuitiveness, is a retrospective of his experiences with Vantiberg and von Trier.
Film Review magazine spoke with Dodd Manto about the connection between handheld photography and dance, as well as the constant need for self-reinvention by cinematographers; at the 2016 Polish International Film Festival of Cinematography, he won the Bronze Frog Award for his photographic work in the film Snowden.
Reporter: The driving concept behind the creation of Snowden is that in cinematography is filled with a snooper's style, a formal expression of the film's surveillance and paranoia themes. Interestingly, it's also key to the approach you take in Family Celebration, where the camera is an intrusive, provocative witness, a vivid embodiment of the broken bond of the family.
MANTO: I never thought about it, it's really interesting. In fact, I've been talking to people about Snowden recently, and I recall that I sometimes place the camera in a scene where two people are talking: one shot from this angle, the other from the opposite angle, and yet there is a third person, or a third listener. In Family Celebration, I need to tell all the actors that there are two worlds in this film: Earth, where all the plot, narrative and dramatic conflict take place; and then there is the other side, the world of the dead sister - not only her world, but the little memory of this sister as a person who has in people's minds, not supernatural, but another, non-earthly...
Reporter: Metaphysical dimension.
MANTO: Yeah, metaphysically, it's a world I love so much, and it sustains my instincts as a filmmaker and my poetry. The one you mentioned may be potentially in my body, because I've made a lot of movies and I've created a lot of work since Family Celebration. Every time a new story comes along, it officially becomes a new conversation with a whole new person and with myself, a conversation about how the film should be created. I might actually repeat myself, or reproduce some elements that I thought were unfinished. So what you just said is clever, but it's also logical and natural: I recreate some ideas about why the camera is fixed or moved in a particular way, and that's the clear connection between the photographic creations of the two films.
Oliver (Stone) was a master storyteller with his own uniquely succinct, industrialized style of storytelling, a rather conventional, straightforward concept of filmmaking that is now more pronounced than it was when he wrote JFK (1991) and Natural Born Killers (1994). Maybe he was younger at the time, but he had a close relationship with Robert Richardson, who was the cinematographer for many of Oliver's early films.
Frankly I don't know if we succeeded (to create Snowden)... It's a very difficult movie, because a lot of the space is full of characters talking, and the amount of information is very large. Now that I'm looking at you, I can quickly decide if I want to trust you or not, and I can understand you on a more "pluralistic" level. So the difference between this way of communicating and the online world we live in now — social networks, cameras, and the work I do — is very critical, and very important for the theme of Snowden.
We live in a world with less and less privacy. Ethical standards are changing, and people in specific jobs, including me putting a camera in a certain position without telling the actors that there's a camera there, are all... Not to say dangerous, because when you're making a movie, you're doing creative work. But if you go to someone's house at night while someone is asleep and look at their computer or their phone, it's a different story entirely.
That's the only real connection between Snowden's cinematography and Family Celebration, and in both films I placed the camera at a high or low angle. When I started talking to Oliver about it, and I don't know if you noticed it or not, but my style was actually a bit wandering, poetic and a little illogical, so Oliver sometimes got a little bit of an understanding of what I was trying to say in a particular situation at the time. I often end up saying, "Well, that's not going to work." I've got to show you. "So, I showed him a display board with hundreds of abstract pictures of his mother on it to help him understand what I was expressing, and also to help the film not just talk and have more connotations."
Interviewer: This is probably the most dramatic script you've ever shot.
MANTO: Yeah, it's like a suspense case where no body can be found, no conclusion, no car chase scene or sex scene. And because of Oliver's perfectionism, he wanted to present the facts to the audience as accurately as possible, and the unfolding of the story of this film took a lot of time. So in the end, there is only so much time left for the ending to really show the audience where Ed (Snowden) is now. But as a super-method-driven monster like Oliver, he'll argue — he's a marijuana-smoking freak and a rare hybrid of near-autism-style detail control — that people are bound to pick at the punch. So he wanted to try to add as much content as possible, because he knew the studio would hit him in any place. So he needs to add a lot of factual material to the whole film, and this kind of content is mostly two shots back and forth to shoot the dialogue between the two characters.
And I do feel that, as an artist, it's important to inject a little bit of audience space into the film, so that it's as if there's another thread going on, and the audience's focus is not only on the online, intellectual, and mental storyline, but also on getting excited by the occasional unexpected vignette. I want to make these episodes more elaborate and restrained. I'm more colloquial and direct in the way I show color, but Oliver himself is very restrained. So I had a lot of ideas during the shoot preparations; it was a short time, but Oliver wasn't very involved, and he was looking for investment a week or two before we started shooting. So I was in Germany, where our film was filmed, and we set up the characters and sets with the designers; and we tried to find a balance that would make the film believable and a little more exciting in the language of the film.
What happens when you work with a more visual director like Russ von Trier? Since I'm interviewing you here, I must mention the opening of The Antichrist. I think it's one of the most visually stunning, haunting openings in the history of cinema. It is a fascinating, clear interpretation of the connection between film and ballet. How was this scene designed? Did you make a lot of storyboard scripts during the creative process?
Mantour: The Antichrist, you know, was the last film I worked with Russ. He had a very clear idea of what he wanted to present in the play. We repeatedly discussed the shooting of the black-and-white film, and when we started to discuss the details of the picture, this paragraph was not yet a sub-shot script, but more of an idea, a concept. Then we found out that we needed to be a little more specific. Because it was shot in high-speed photography, and the situation was complicated, and there were kids: you had to make a split-shot script for this scene, because you had to figure out in advance how to get it done.
Reporter: There is a clear logic behind this scene architecture, and the way images are connected is growing exponentially. What I imagined was that the sex scenes had to be rehearsed carefully to achieve that ballet action and make the camera's movements seem so microscopic and sharp.
Mantour: Yeah, we had to sift through the scene to make the picture of our parents making love traumatic — we've all had that experience (laughs). We still had a good creative relationship with Russ, and we worked well together on abstract content in the process of creating The Antichrist. If there is a conflict between us, it is more for naturalism and how to achieve it. I felt that film was a quick and rewarding meeting between our two different personalities and traits. We've been working together for a long time, and The Antichrist has become a brilliant work.
When it's brilliant, it's really great — it's like a work of art with its own good and bad sides. When you're in a good relationship with a director like him, what happens is that he's around you, he's going to listen, and I can also draw ideas, we come up with some initial ideas, and then he'll develop them step by step. Russ was involved in the post-production of many films because he knew that high-speed photography was more technical. And you know, I got involved and explained why high-speed photography is used everywhere, and how graphic sex scenes should be. And in fact, the third shot of the film is like a shot — two large testicles colliding with the vagina; but it's also more aesthetically pleasing.
Reporter: Yes, this scene has a sense of dance. The camera has a function that amplifies subtle movements on the limbs.
MANTO: Right. We use professional porn actors as stand-ins, and it's very strange to me to be so close to the penis. I've never done anything like this before.
Reporter: Did you give performance instruction to the actors at that time?
MANTO: Yes, "Can you get in and out of here a little faster, or can you pull out there?" (Laughs).
Reporter: That's really ridiculous.
Manto: It feels very surreal, and then it becomes artistic creation. Suddenly, there are flying testicles in the third shot, which feels a little shocking. I looked at the original material for a long time, not perverted, but simply watching these testicles swing back and forth. I was thinking, "This fucking height is higher than all the things I've done before." "And that's the essence of our evolution with Russ, and it's really extraordinary for me." This scene doesn't have my favorite picture, but it's definitely very unique.
Reporter: Speaking of dance, I think of your photography in Slumdog Millionaire, one of the most intensely animated cameras you shot. As a camera operator, you tend to put yourself in the center of the action scene; and as you run through the slums like a wild boar, you do become a living camera in this film. How was such a fascinating camera movement prepared for shooting? Did you take a dance class at the time?
Manto: I'm actually the worst dancer in the world. I danced with the camera, and I danced with Chris Doyle, who was also there, and we often talked about dancing, and dancing with the camera. But he was a dancer; I was a little shy, like a cricket. But the way "Slumdog Millionaire" was filmed was similar to "Family Celebration": I became a protagonist through the camera. In Family Celebration, I'm basically a nervous family member, completely unable to believe what's going on in front of me. You know, those shots aren't evenly distributed, and the camera looks around: "Is the person I was talking to just now my aunt?" "Something like this. So it's a protagonist-style camera, and it's not repetitive, but it's original, improvised and natural.
When I was shooting Slumdog Millionaire, because the kids couldn't understand what I was saying, and I couldn't understand what they were saying, I had to find a way to move these high-end, powerful cameras, invent shooting methods and things like that. I've been working this way, so that wasn't a new experience for me – it was unprecedented for the world. But this approach helped me down to the height range of the kids, not looking down at them, but with them.
I was editing a lot of scenes in my head — in this case you just imagine: "It's absolutely fine to do that." If you shoot like that, you have to stop and reset. "When I made that film, I spent a lot of my time working with people I couldn't communicate with in words. We could hear the translators whispering, but we didn't know what was going on, just running around, sweating —I was shooting with the kids with a very good focus adjuster and Danny Boyle.
I think the beauty of Slumdog Millionaire is that it races and runs... I always have to work out a recipe for myself, a pot, an idea, and then strictly implement it, so that the creation is not too bland or overheated, but an organic whole, the way I think. Snowden was a harder film for me because it was the first time we worked with Oliver. We trusted each other and had a great time working together, but he was very, very traditional in some ways. I had to go beyond that, and I tried to do it that way.
Reporter: Since your style of photography has become the epitome of your approach and use of the camera, as you describe as this improvised, sporty photographic experience, I'm curious to see von Trier working with him, how do you think of him operating the camera himself? Did you feel that his doing so would limit your status as a creator as a cinematographer for his films?
MANTO: No. You know, Russ has been working with Manuel Albert Claro ever since, and I think he's better fit now than I am because he strictly implements Russ' vision. I don't want to do things that directors don't want, but I have my own dialogue, a powerful emotional commitment, and directors either just like it and choose you because of that trait, or they won't. For a long time, Russ and I have had this kind of partnership, and we have worked very well together. This relationship lasts as long as it can.
Approaching the later stages of the filming of The Antichrist, he became very weak and very ill, and he was unable to even make stable pictures. So whenever he wanted to take a shot, I would go over and say to him, "I'm not trying to embarrass you." I want you to know I'm your friend. "Then I'll help him." In an earlier scene in the film, when the protagonists walk on a slope in the forest, and then it rains...
Reporter: Did he personally shoot the scene?
MANTO: He shot part of it, yes, and I helped him too. But you know, the final presentation of this scene on the screen in the theater is a little uncomfortable, and the effect is not entirely good.
Reporter: The picture then becomes a direct interpretation of the creator's inner turmoil, and the way a poet writes poetry may be the flow of his soul.
MANTO: But it's sad... We talked about it, and the ultimate problem was that this partnership was too hard for me to keep engaged. And he and I are very close friends, and we are close allies, so it's hard for me to say that or do that. I never wanted to hurt him, and I never hurt him, but I felt that the situation was very difficult for him.
Reporter: So on set you almost became his life mentor.
MANTO: I'm his friend and ally. You know, when I just moved to Denmark and built my life there, there were only a few few points of light in my life, a few warm candles, and he was one of them. I rarely approached people because I was introverted, but I took the initiative to get close to him, and we became friends, and for a long time I was close to him. This is indeed a very special identity. We learned a lot from each other.
Reporter: Working with him must have shaped your relationship with the film scenes.
MANTO: Yes, and it also deeply enriches the relationship. I will always remember this, because this is also grateful to him. He's also done things that aren't so noble and honest, but that's his own problem, his own inner struggle. These things have nothing to do with filmmaking, just himself – you have to look at the two separately.
Reporter: He is a confused poet, but you can also say that the beauty of his work comes from the pain of his soul.
MANTO: Yes, a lot of poets are confused. I have always believed in the philosophical idea that good poets, like Dr. Zhivago, can break through all the difficulties of life, even when all the warriors and politicians have lost their lives. Poets are able to pick themselves up in times of difficulty and get through difficult times. I think that's why the people who love movies the most will win in the end. It is also for this reason that when I judge films here [at the Polish International Film Festival of Cinematography], I try to praise poetic films – a trait that is even more important. Other creations are all too common.