How the Cinematography of ‘Die My Love’ Reconciles Psychological Horror and Dark Comedy

Writer-director Lynne Ramsey‘s “Die My Love” is one of the most psychologically scarring movies in recent memory, a searing look at a young mother (Jennifer Lawrence) coming apart as her ill-equipped husband (Robert Pattinson) watches helplessly. “I see it as a psychic horror movie, and a sad depiction of a relationship corroding and dying,” cinematographer Seamus McGarvey told IndieWire. Yet Ramsey saw the movie differently. “She actually sees the film as a comedy.”

The key to the movie’s greatness lies in those seemingly contradictory points of view, as “Die My Love” is a singular experience that’s both darkly hilarious and devastatingly tragic — and as nail-bitingly suspenseful as any thriller. McGarvey’s task was to visually reconcile these tones while finding the cinematic grammar to express his heroine’s emotional and physical meltdown, something he was able to accomplish thanks to his established common language with Ramsey, with whom he previously collaborated on “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”

“It starts with the script, but with Lynn the script is a springboard to other ways of thinking about the film,” McGarvey said. “We have these circuitous conversations and get excited about other films, other artworks, bits of music, and all these things multiply before they get refined and distilled into something else.” For McGarvey, one of the key reference points was the work of director Robert Bresson, whose work in the narrow 1.33:1 aspect ratio inspired McGarvey as he and Ramsey framed their film in those dimensions — a decision that concentrates the viewer’s attention on the characters’ faces and gestures.

“Looking at a portrait as opposed to an image with more context just shows the human dilemma,” McGarvey said. “Whether you’re looking at the front of a person’s face or the ear or the back of the head, there’s something about eschewing vistas and landscapes and the comfort of looking at the whole wide world that brings you back into the head space of whoever you’re looking at.” The film shot on location in beautiful Calgary settings, but the 1.33 ratio keeps them maddeningly cut off at the edges — Lawrence’s character is close to the majesty but can never really touch it or feel fully part of it, and the visual isolation — which is exacerbated by the abundance of compositions that separate characters from each other — provides much of the film’s power.

‘Die My Love’Kimberly French

“It had to be restricted in some way,” McGarvey said of the film’s field of view, noting that the aspect ratio lent itself to singles rather than group shots — and that even in shots where characters share the frame, the production design often divides them with windows, doorways, and other frames within frames. “The opening shot suggests that we are in a house that is actually breathing, with frames and frames and frames that are almost like an infinity mirror. It connotes a kind of psychic portent, that something isn’t quite right. That idea extends osmotically throughout the film and we just crank it up to 11 as the film progresses.”

Although “Die My Love” is a film of exquisite visual precision, Ramsay and McGarvey did not plan their shots extensively ahead of time; they chose to begin each day with a general idea of the visual design but let the specific compositions and movements be dictated by the performances. “The actors come in knowing that they’ve got a lot of freedom and elasticity being in a particular space,” McGarvey said, “and I try to light the sets so that there’s no sense of limiting that space. There’s a feral element to the whole film that we were trying to convey, so we set up the camera and let the actors roam — it was like wildlife photography in a way, only you’ve got two of the world’s greatest actors.”

By lighting minimally, McGarvey not only gave the actors freedom of movement but increased his own flexibility in terms of where to put the camera and when to move it. “Normally there’s such restraint because you know that to the left or the right there’s a light you can’t show or a flag you can’t tip up or down,” McGarvey said. In the case of “Die My Love,” McGarvey used Ektachrome film stock rated at 100 ASA, which meant he could rely heavily on natural light.

The Ektachrome had an additional advantage, which was to give the film the nostalgic haze of an old home movie. “There’s a sense of optimism at the beginning of the movie, and the color of Ektachrome provides this kind of nostalgic blanket,” McGarvey said, noting that the unnatural quality of the color could also blur into something more disturbing as Lawrence’s character became more and more troubled. “Essentially the film is completely subjective — we’re always trying to show her perspective.”

‘Die My Love’Kimberly French

That extended to the night exteriors, which were shot day-for-night in a manner that mirrored the lead character’s confusion. “Is it daylight or is it night? Why is it both? In her mental state, day and night superimpose into each other,” McGarvey said, though he noted that the choice to shoot day-for-night began as a practical concern. “We were shooting in the summer in Calgary, where there’s very little nighttime — only a few hours.”

McGarvey and Ramsey weren’t sure what they were going to do about the film’s many night scenes until McGarvey ran some tests shooting day-for-night with filters and smoke. “Lynne loved the look because it looked hand-knitted,” McGarvey said. “It looked slightly wrong and that paired with the mental state. It served us really well, because we were able to shoot 10 hours instead of three or four. There were raised eyebrows from the producers, but then when we graded it, it just fit the movie perfectly.”

For McGarvey, arriving at those kinds of solutions for both practical and aesthetic problems speaks to the fluidity of his collaboration with Ramsey. “She really invites collaboration with all the department heads,” McGarvey said. “And it’s beautiful. It’s a joy to have a filmmaker who’s so singular in her approach but makes you feel that your contribution is heard.”

“Die My Love” is currently streaming on MUBI.