American Cinematographer - January 2011 - 24

Above: Katie (Kirsten Dunst) becomes increasingly unhappy in her marriage to David (Ryan Gosling) in All Good Things, shot by Michael Seresin, BSC. Right: The early days of the young couple’s marriage are rendered in a brighter, more colorful palette.

Dark Family Dynamics By Ted Elrick

Robert Durst seemed to have everything, including financial success, courtesy of his family’s real-estate dynasty in Manhattan, and a beautiful and loving wife, Kathleen McCormack. When Kathleen mysteriously disappeared in 1982, some family and friends suspected Robert of murder. Her body has never been found, and her disappearance remains the most notorious missing-person’s case in New York history. Intrigued by the unresolved aspects of the Durst case, director Andrew Jarecki (Capturing the Friedmans ) teamed with producer/writer Marc Smerling and writer
24 January 2011

Marcus Hinchey to develop a fictional thriller based on the events. The result is All Good Things, which focuses on the Marks family: David (Ryan Gosling); his wife, Katie (Kirsten Dunst); and his real-estate mogul father, Sanford (Frank Langella). “I’m always attracted by monster stories,” says Jarecki. “When you look at the truth behind a monster, you often find a real person who had hopes and dreams, and then things turned out differently. I think we tend to take people who do dark, awful things and put them in a box, saying, ‘That person is obviously totally different from me, and I don’t have to worry about anything because I don’t have a shred of that person in me.’ But the reality is that we
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all have a shred of that person in us.” After interviewing a number of young cinematographers for All Good Things , Jarecki decided he wanted a cameraman with considerable experience. “The young ones seemed like they would come up with clever ideas every second, and I felt the film might become gimmicky,” he explains. He thought of Michael Seresin, BSC, and called Alan Parker ( Angel Heart ) and Alfonso Cuarón ( Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban; AC June ’04), who said his instinct was correct. “Michael’s powerful images in films like Angel Heart and Angela’s Ashes , and even The Prisoner of Azkaban , which I feel is the most cinematic of the Potter films, show that he is someone who cares deeply about the mystery of film,” Jarecki observes. “His work suggests that he thinks a film should not just be a continuation of reality.” After several long-distance discussions about the script — with Jarecki in New York and Seresin at home in New Zealand — Seresin decided to sign on. “I like a dark story because it demands more from an audience,” says the cinematographer. “I like movies that gravitate toward the underlit, darker side of life. When there are a lot of shadows, the audience isn’t quite sure if they can see something or not, and their imagination starts to work.” The story covers about 30 years, from the mid-1970s to 2001, and Seresin was keen to differentiate the periods subtly. “I very consciously did not want the film to have a ‘then’ and ‘now’ feel in terms of a grainier Seventies and a slicker present day — that would have been too intrusive,” he says. “We lit the two distinct periods in quite different ways. For the Seventies, we used brighter, high-key lighting, as well as brighter colors in the wardrobe and art direction. The latter period, around 2001, was lower key, with more contrast and deeper shadows, and with darker clothes and set colors. “The Seventies was when the world sort of changed from black-and-white to color,” continues the cinematographer. “It’s a bit of a cliché to have the story start with bright, sunny colors, but that’s how it was for people who were young then. As the story progresses, we gradually start introducing the idea that things aren’t quite right. We keep some of the bright colors as a counterpoint, but I felt that some of the images could still

All Good Things photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

American Cinematographer - January 2011

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