, or on and on and on. But also available to him or her is Melville and Jane Austen or whatever it is. As a filmmaker, what’s the canon for you, particularly when it comes to Black American film, as constricted as it was by circumstance?
I want to ask you a particular aesthetic question. Throughout your work, you prioritize lighting—something that not everybody thinks about. What’s the role of light in your films, and what’s the process you go through with your collaborator and cinematographer James Laxton and your colorist Alex Bickel to light actors and scenes in a way that’s become so iconic in your work?
Barry, another thing that seems very important to you, in addition to light, is, naturally enough, sound. A film teacher once told you that images are only fifty per cent of the experience of watching a film, and the score is the other fifty per cent, which seems like a lot. You and your composer, Nicholas Britell, obviously take that greatly to heart.
Brilliant, articulate, beautiful!