Slumdog Millionaire: Dod Mantle's Indian Summer
A Return to India Brings Oscar Success for Slumdog Cinematographer
Mar 30, 2009
British cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle may have spent most of his working life on the tightknit Danish arthouse circuit, but a string of collaborations with English director Danny Boyle has culminated in his Best Cinematography Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire. As well as bearing the most visible fruit of his relatively short, but remarkable career, Slumdog was also something of a return to roots for Dod Mantle, who has evolved into one of the most innovative cinematographers in modern cinema.
From Oxford to India
Although born and bred in 1950s Oxfordshire, Dod Mantle spent his early twenties travelling throughout continental Europe. Falling head over heels for a Danish girl, he followed her to Scandinavia, where a chance visit to a jumble sale led to the purchase of his first still camera.
Keen to continue his travels, Dod Mantle headed for India, where he found himself surrounded by vivid colours and utterly enchanted by the spirituality and vitality of everyday life. Having arrived in 1979 intending to explore his grandparents' colonial ties, Dod Mantle instead returned to Denmark with thousands of photographs. Many years later, in an interview with Film Ireland magazine, he would describe India as 'an extraordinary gateway to image making'. It proved to be a gateway that would lead all the way to the top.
Education and Early Career
With serendipity taking hold, it was Dod Mantle's experience photographing India that eventually led him to cinematography. After returning to Denmark, he enrolled in a BA at the London College of Printing, from which he graduated in 1983. He then elected to forsake the privileged British art school environment, making a permanent shift to Denmark two years later and enrolling in cinematography at the Danish National Film School.
After graduating, Dod Mantle's first major project was Kaj's Fødselsdag (The Birthday Trip, 1990), directed by Lone Scherfig, a Danish director who would later gain praise for her exploration of personal identity in films such as Italian for Beginners (2000) and Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself (2002).
Shooting His Way Across Europe
For Dod Mantle, the rest of the 1990s were peppered with projects throughout Denmark and the rest of Europe. He was behind the lens on Phillip Gröning's German cult classic Terrorists! (1992), Thomas Vinterberg's debut feature The Biggest Heroes (1996) and Stig Björkman's video portrait of Lars von Trier, Tranceformer (1997).
Having already worked with Vinterberg and von Trier, Dod Mantle found himself at the epicentre of the Dogme movement as it attempted to revolutionize cinema in the late 1990s. Challenging filmmakers with its stripped back aesthetic, Dogme seemed perfect for Dod Mantle who took up the DOP role for two of the movement's opening salvos: Dogme #1, Vinterberg's Festen (The Celebration, 1998) and Dogme #3, Søren Kragh-Jacobsen's Mifune's Sad Song (1999). He was also behind the camera for his - and Dogme's - first American foray, Harmony Korine's Dogme #7 Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)
North Sea Crossings
Despite his Oxford upbringing, Dod Mantle was something of a latecomer to the British production industry. Having gained wider recognition for his work on Festen, Dod Mantle went on to shoot two Danny Boyle/Jim Cartwright collaborations for BBC TV in 2001 (Strumpet and Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise), before getting behind the lens for two Boyle features, the outstanding viral horror, 28 Days Later (2002) and children's cash caper Millions (2004). Other British projects for Dod Mantle have included Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe's Brothers of the Head (2005) and Kevin Macdonald's The Last King of Scotland (2006).
Meanwhile, the Danish front has seen him hard at work on Thomas Vinterberg's It's All About Love (2003), Dear Wendy (2005) and En mand kommer hem (A Man Comes Home, 2007), Lars von Trier's Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005), Lone Scherfig's Hjemve (Just Like Home, 2007) and a series of documentaries and short films. In 2008, he also completed work on his first Icelandic production, Valdís Óskarsdóttir's Sveitabrúðkaup.
Slumdog Millionaire: A Return to India
Four years after their previous collaboration on Millions, and almost thirty years after Dod Mantle's initial journey to India, Danny Boyle called on him to shoot his film adaptation of Vikras Swarup's Q&A, which had been given the big screen treatment by Simon Beaufoy.
Visually, Slumdog Millionaire proved to be a perfect blend of Dod Mantle's creative eye and Boyle's doggedly enthusiastic approach to filmmaking. When required, Dod Mantle was able to seamlessly alternate between the rough, documentary style of Dogme and the slicker style of films such as Dogville and Millions, and the same vitality and colour that had enchanted Dod Mantle on his first visit to India is vividly brought to life in the world of the Mumbai slums. Undoubtedly, it is a vision that more than deserved its Oscar success, and the crowning achievement of one of modern cinema's finest cinematographers.
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