We interview cinematographer Seamus McGarvey about his work and creative choices in Die My Love, his collaboration with Lynne Ramsay, and more.
When Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) move from New York to a house in Montana that the latter inherited from his uncle, everything is perfect at first. They are young, they are in love, and they’re expecting their first child. But after the baby is born, Grace’s life changes. Most of the time, she finds herself alone in the house, dealing with a very different life than what she had imagined for herself and grappling with urges and desires that often remain unfulfilled. She feels things, and she definitely needs things, but she doesn’t really know who she is. And so, she begins to unravel, finding a new kind of beast within herself – one that’s completely unpredictable, and not entirely sane, but also brave, strong, and wild, in the best possible way.
Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson shine in Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love as two people in love who are trying their best to survive a life they don’t recognise anymore, and stunning technical execution makes for a hypnotic, visceral film that you fully experience alongside its protagonists, and that will speak to every single viewer in different ways.
At the BFI London Film Festival, we sat down for an interview with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey. Read what he told us about working with Lynne Ramsay, how the film was shot on reversal stock, in Academy Ratio and with certain lenses, specific scenes in the movie, the medium of cinema, and more.
Seamus McGarvey on the Origins of Die My Love, Using 1.33:1 Academy Ratio, and Creating a Sense of Claustrophobia
Congratulations for this fantastic film! How was Die My Love pitched to you?
Seamus McGarvey: Lynne Ramsay and I had done a film before, We Need to Talk About Kevin, so we had history, but we’ve been friends for years. I’ve known her for thirty years, from [when we lived in] Glasgow, and we’ve been friends ever since. When Die My Love came about, we were actually prepping a different movie that was going to be shot in Greenland. Then, suddenly, she called me up and said “Look, Jennifer Lawrence and Martin Scorsese have asked me to do this film, Die My Love.”
She sent me the script, which was amazing. I hadn’t read the book, but Lynne’s scripts are very different to other scripts. It’s really when you start talking with her that you get a true sense of what the film is going to be about. So we just started sharing ideas, and talking about the psychology of the film. We talked about Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Grace, and how we might go about depicting an innocence and a yearning for nirvana and happiness that then gradually gets corroded through all sorts – mostly, through things that happen in one’s head. Lynne is a master at the depiction of the unravelling of people’s minds on film.
I think that cinema itself is uniquely able to show those things because of its essential wordlessness, and how images can fragment and be kaleidoscopic. And because you project onto a film as an audience member, a largely wordless film becomes like a million films for every audience member that witnesses it, when they stitch themselves into the space between the frames. I love that about cinema: its ability to be discerning without being didactic. It’s an interesting medium on such a young art form.
I agree with you! I think this film in particular can be perceived in very different ways by different audiences. What struck me the most was Grace’s journey as a whole, and how it changes throughout the film, also thanks to the different ways in which she’s framed and shot.
For example, it feels like the scenes where she’s alone outside are soft and magical, whereas when she’s inside on her own, with all these mirrors and windows, it feels like we’re in an otherworldly dimension. But on top of this, and especially when Jackson is also around, it also feels very claustrophobic.
S.M.: We wanted to create a sense of claustrophobia. Even though we shot in Calgary, Canada, with vast open landscapes, we wanted there to be a sense of the curtailment of their respective personal vistas. To do that, we looked at things that would limit scope. The first thing we did was decide that we were going to shoot in 1.33:1 Academy Ratio, which is ideally suited to portraiture. We looked at a lot of films [that place a lot of emphasis on shooting characters’ faces], like Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.
But the house itself is also a very vital character in the film. It’s seen in this square frame, and there are lots of frames within frames. You talk about the mirrors; we constantly found parameters that would lock the persona in the house. The frame and the 1.33 aspect ratio lean into that. I had never shot a film in 1.33 aspect ratio before. It was an exciting way [to approach the film], because it really makes you think about composition. Cinema is destined for widespread, but when you subject yourself to the limitations of a square frame, every frame becomes considered and thought about, because, compositionally, images don’t fall easily into that square frame. People, including some producers, have criticised the use of that frame, but I think we made the right decision.
The use of our film stock [was also important], in terms of these limitations. We didn’t want to make a realist film. We wanted to jump beyond that and do something that was apparently real and naturalistic, but that actually had the attributes of the fantastical. That’s why we decided to shoot on reversal stock, so Ektachrome.
Shooting Die My Love on ‘Ektachrome’ Reversal Stock and How the Night Scenes Were Shot
Please tell me more about the choice to use Ektachrome.
Seamus McGarvey: It’s a reversal stock, which has got very limited latitude: things go dark very quickly, and things go bright very quickly, whereas normal film stock or digital has a range – a latitude of maybe 16 stops. There’s a great panoply of detail, shadow and highlight, whereas [Ektachrome] really crushes things down into a limited amount of information. But it also has a signature colour stamp to it that you just can’t get away from. Even in the grade and when you’re doing the colour timing, it is what it is. It was a statement of intent from the outset – not only to shoot on film, but to shoot on Ektachrome reversal stock.
How does it all work exactly?
S.M.: Well, when you shoot stills, rather than a negative – which is a reverse image that you make a print, or a positive image, from – with reversal stock, you expose it, and it is like a slide. It’s like those slides you used to get that you project. In a slide projector, it’s a positive image. It’s uniquely saturated, and it’s got a peculiar granularity. It’s a strange look in terms of skin tone and how it registers colour. It’s far from naturalistic, which [is one of those] practical, technical things that we felt fed into the distancing from the rail that Grace is feeling in the film. It’s a gilded sense of beauty and optimism, yet there’s something ultimately corrosive and dangerous about it as well.
Is it hard to shoot on reversal stock?
S.M.: It’s incredibly difficult to use. The possibility of messing things up is absolutely palpable and possible: it’s a tricky thing. There’s always that sense of… Is it going to work or isn’t it? It’s that step into the darkness that shooting on reversal allows. We followed that through, and that notion of fever dream of the unreal, with day for night. There’s lots of night photography in the film, but we shot everything by day.
That’s amazing!
S.M.: I used these clear glass filters that I smoked up with black, using a candle. I painted out the bits that I wanted to see [more clearly]. When Robert Pattinson’s Jackson is looking at the stars with a telescope, for example, it’s shot in full sunny daylight, but it feels like night – a nightmarish depiction of night.
Seamus McGarvey on Working with Lynne Ramsay
That scene you were talking about just now is such an incredible scene too. It’s when Grace drops milk and ink on a piece of paper, which then becomes the sky at night, and then you see Jackson’s reflection and realise that he’s looking at it through a telescope.
Seamus McGarvey: Lynne’s visual imagination is so fervent. It’s amazing when she comes up with ideas like that: breast milk merging with ink, merging with the sky at night. As a cinematographer, it’s tremendously exciting to work with somebody who’s a cinema poet. It’s such a young art form, and Lynne is at the forefront of eloquence in cinema as a poetic art form.
Lynne is a cinematographer too, isn’t she?
S.M.: Yes, that’s when I met her first: she was [studying cinematography and direction] at the National Film and Television School [in Beaconsfield, England]. It’s really easy to work with her because she speaks my technical language, but more importantly, she is a droit, technically, but her heart is the heart of an artist.
Has your collaboration evolved at all since We Need to Talk About Kevin?
S.M.: It has, because we’ve been friends over these years. We’re good friends, and we’ve remained friends despite the difficulties sometimes of making a film together.
‘It’s A Cinema Contract with an Inanimate Object’ – Allowing the Camera to ‘See’, and Lynne Ramsay as a ‘Cinematic Ghost Hunter’
You mentioned the house feeling like a character in itself, and I agree with you. I especially love the way our perception of it changes throughout the film. Did you have a say in the production design aspect of it?
Seamus McGarvey: Tim Grimes was the production designer on the film, and he found that house: it was a real space. But Lynne had always imagined it as a living entity, almost as a dark force with lots of history. Houses have that: houses that you’ve lived in breathe; the walls talk, and there are a lot of phantasmagorical attributes to a place. I think that, architecturally, houses dictate how you move through them, not only in life, but also with your camera. And cinema is an architectural form. It’s about space and light, and the movement of the camera through spaces, like how a window dictates the way a place appears by day or by night.
There’s something completely ghostly about a place if you’re sensitive to it. I think Lynne is a cinematic ghost hunter: she allows and recognises that a place speaks, and is as volatile and vivid as a human protagonist in a film. The house was a character; it was as important as Grace and Jackson, and all its histories osmotically leaked out of the screen. It was interesting to be sensitive to that when you’re sitting there with your camera, which I always think is like a divining rod of emotions.
In a particular part of a room, your camera can allow you to find things. Tarkovsky believed – and I think Lynne Ramsey does as well – that there’s something almost alchemical about the sacred act of putting a camera in a place, with a lens, and allowing it to see because it’s not a human eye. It’s mechanical, but it’s imbued with a lot of prayer. I think something sacred happens with a film camera.
There’s also the act of faith when you’re shooting on celluloid, because it’s a total f*cking mystery! [smiles] It’s an act of faith as to whether it’s actually going to come out or not. There’s something spiritual and ecclesiastical about the camera and its attributes. If you treat it with that respect and faith, I think it lends something mysterious that we can’t even preordain. It’s a cinema contract with an inanimate object, like a camera that has magical qualities. It’s a magic box, really. I love that about the camera; when it’s treated with respect, and when a film set is seen as a place where you allow things to happen wordlessly and magically in front of your camera, something just happens.
I can really see this kind of magic happening with Lynne Ramsay’s films, and with Die My Love in particular.
S.M.: On the page, the script was really good, but not as emotive or powerful as the film has ultimately become. That’s why some filmmakers are really good, and some are mimicry artists who emulate previous films. Lynne is quite different. She’s somebody who brings an unexpected magic to things because of just who and how she is on set.
Seamus McGarvey on the Beautiful ‘F*cked-Up-Ness’ of the Petzval Lens and Shooting a Film Where Anything Was Possible
I really love one of the lenses you’re using in the film! I noticed it in one of the first scenes in particular, where Grace and Jackson are crawling in the grass: it’s almost like a wide angle lens, but different, and it gives you a very otherwordly feeling as you watch.
Seamus McGarvey: Well, I really like sharp lenses. I like to know what I’ve got, and I like doing things with filtration, or film stock, or messing around with how the camera works: i like the surety of knowing. However, with this film, I think we really needed something that was haphazard, and chaotic, and accidental. I needed a lens that was, for want of a better word, f*cked-up. That f*cked-up-ness was lent by a lens called a Petzval.
It’s an old lens: the glass is from the 1920s. It’s a beautiful look. Essentially, the centre of the lens is sharp, but the outside – the out-of-focus bits of the lens – has this very singular, swirling bokeh that feels like a description of your inner mind. For example, if you frame a portrait of somebody in the centre of the lens, all the out-of-focus bits are like a carousel of emotions swirling around. You’ve got an inbuilt ‘pictorial’ version of the inner workings of a mind unhinged. That’s why we used that lens: it was a 58mm Petzval, and we used it a lot in the film.
It really does feel like you’re in her head. It must have been an interesting scene to film, since Jennifer and Robert are both moving around quite a lot.
S.M.: That was something that Lynne talked about from day one, and actually acted out in my flat! [smiles] She had this notion of this animalistic character moving around the house on all fours. It’s something that Jennifer really ran with, and played with: it was lovely to be there [as these ideas were discussed and led to what we see in the film].
It’s really such a privilege to work on a film that was essentially quite low-budget, but with two of the biggest actors in the world, who were just there to experiment and knew that they were working with a great director like Lynne. They were full of the joyful prospect of experimentation. They could have done any huge movie, but they chose to do this one, and they ran at it with abandon.
It was lovely to see these ideas scintillating from that precious point in the morning when people sit down and try to ruminate over what they’re going to shoot and how they’re going to shoot it. It’s tremendously exciting, as a cinematographer, to be at that very privileged position of finding a way of describing a scene that’s in black and white on a page.
We didn’t do storyboards or anything. It was just trusting yourself with the privilege of instinct, and knowing that anything was possible. It’s hugely exciting as a filmmaker, knowing that you start the day with nothing and you end the day having made something that is going to affect people, hopefully in a good or a bad way, but certainly in a way that will spark their emotions. When we treat a film with artistic respect, artistic abandon, and ingenuity, then audiences will feel it.
Creating A ‘Psychic Space’ for Arguments in the Car Scene of Die My Love
There’s a key scene in the film where Grace, Jackson, and their dog are in a car, and it leads to an argument. I really love the way that scene was shot, with the different angles and also the speed changes.
Seamus McGarvey: Well, car scenes are an absolute pain to shoot, conventionally, because you’re on a process trailer. It’s so technical and difficult to shoot, and you never have the camera in the right position. There are only a certain number of places you can put a camera in a car when it’s shot in that way, on a real road. But this was such a psychological scene that we wanted different angles, and we wanted to move the camera around. So we decided to shoot it in the studio.
We shot plates of backgrounds moving, and we just shot against these LEDs. It wasn’t a fancy volume stage; it was just big TV screens, basically: big LED background walls that we had. That’s how we were able to get the camera in weird positions: we were able to pull away windows and get tighter shots, and get the kid and the dog, and move the camera around, and create a sense of… Very definitely a sense of artifice, and that it was not a real space.
It’s almost like a psychic space where arguments [can take place]. I mean, the best arguments I’ve ever had have been in cars, because there’s no way out. You’re speeding down a road and you can’t get away. Nobody can walk out of a room and slam the door and go, ‘F*ck you!’. Cars are uniquely disposed to create this pressure cooker environment. That’s what we wanted to explore, and why we wanted to get shots in there that you couldn’t normally get if the film were shot conventionally. We just had a day – half a day, really – where we shot those car scenes, and we had great fun doing that.
Seamus McGarvey on How Cinema Creates the ‘Illusion of Truth’, and Watching Die My Love Again
When you saw the film for the first time, did it look like you thought it would?
Seamus McGarvey: No, it looked like nothing that I had imagined. It’s always a surprise. Actually, the film that we saw in Cannes in May felt different when I saw it again at the BFI London Film Festival in October. Maybe it was the audience, and the expectations, or maybe it was because the film has been out there and talked about since. It’s not markedly different, but I’m always shocked at the transmogrification of what you shoot, because of all the other things that come to bear on a film once you’ve made it. The shooting of it is only a tiny part of it.
The music, the sound, the setting, the grading of it, the editing of one plus one equals three… These juxtapositions create different meaning. That’s what makes cinema a unique art form: all those things that change the real. We’re lured into the idea that, somehow – and especially in a naturalistic film – photography is a reflection of the real, because it depicts the real world, when in fact it’s quite the opposite. It’s completely the opposite. It turns reality on its head.
That’s really exciting about cinema: not only does it have the illusion of truth, but it is made by a lot of people. Ultimately, it’s distilled through a director’s mind and their sensibility, but it’s made up of so many parts and contributions that you get this exponential encrustation of ideas that just multiplies. When that’s corralled by a director’s vision, it becomes more eloquent, cinematographically.
I watched the film at a private screening, in a very small room, so it was quite an intimate experience for me. What was it like to attend the BFI London Film Festival premiere, with so many people?
S.M.: There were over a thousand people in the room, and it was amazing to see it that way. When you’re shooting a film, as a camera person, you’re the first person to see this tiny little image on the ground glass. It’s such a privileged position to be in, because you’re seeing it before – hopefully – millions of people do, and it feels like you’re in that private cinema through a ground glass.
But then you see what you’ve witnessed in a tiny, little postage stamp on a f*cking huge screen with people reacting to it – and there are some shocking moments in the film, particularly the sex and some scenes that are completely arresting. You’re suddenly sharing it with an audience, and you can feel every heartbeat and every bristle of reaction in the room: it’s just completely exciting, as a filmmaker, to know that something that you’ve worked on can have this electrifying effect on people.
Why do you make movies?
S.M.: Well, it’s beyond my control, as John Malkovich said. I just love photography, and I love art, and if I didn’t do those two things, I’d probably be in prison. [smiles] You know, you’ve got to follow what guides you towards your passions. I love that it feels like I’m not doing a real job, but I am, and it’s a privilege to be able to tell stories, or help tell stories alongside other people. I really admire writers who do it on their own. I’m married to a brilliant writer; I just marvel at how she brings stories out of her imagination. I love creating with other people, because I can’t do it on my own. I think that that notion of unity is strength is something that really draws me to cinema as a way of of expressing myself, but alongside collaborators.
I’m always working with people, and every film is different because of that collaboration. And I’m a different cinematographer with every film I do, and that’s exciting: I feel like a different person, a different creator, each time. It’s always a new experience, so it never gets boring. It gives me such excitement and creative energy to work on a new film, and to read a script and then meet a director. I’m working with a director at the moment, and I’m an utterly different cinematographer with her than I was with Lynne. There’s a real excitement in that.
Oh, that’s exciting! Are there any projects you’re working on at the moment that you can talk about?
S.M.: I’m working with Greta Gerwig at the moment. I can’t say anything about it, but she’s extraordinary. She’s just an amazing director. I just feel really lucky to keep being asked to work on films, and to be able to do what I love to do.
Thank you so much for speaking with us!
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Die My Love was screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 17, 2025. The film was released theatrically in the US and Canada, the UK and Ireland, Latin America, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, Spain, Australia and more from November 7, 2025, and will be available to stream on MUBI from December 22.
Header credits: Seamus McGarvey and Lynne Ramsay in a behind the scenes still from Die My Love (© Kimberley French, MUBI) / Film poster (MUBI)
