Everyone, especially Khondji, was smitten with the lobby’s natural light. For an hour or two in the morning, the sunrise transformed the space, whose entire north wall is made of thick, translucent glass. “When the sun hits that glass, it’s absolutely fabulous,” says Khondji. “It’s a beautiful, special, slightly golden light.” To keep the light level consistent over long hours of shooting, the crew positioned five scissorlifts carrying three stands of 12-light or 24-light Dinos each outside the glass wall. That illumination was supplemented inside by helium balloons for top fill, and HMI Pars and 18Ks on the upper balcony aimed into an Ultra Bounce on a traveler system.

In addition, the art department used and replicated existing columns in the lobby and elsewhere that long ago had held cathode tubes as a design element. “The tubes had been gone for years,” says De Blau, “but the columns were still there and the old reflectors for the tubes still existed. We put fluorescents behind all of those and wired them in, so we went back to more of a period look.”

As in the General Assembly room, camera movement in the lobby was accomplished mostly with tracks or dollies. “There’s a lot of movement, but they’re very subtle moves,” says Khondji. “The moves were often generated by Sydney. He would ask for my advice, but he also liked to have a say in positioning the camera, and he’s done many more anamorphic films than any director I know. He’s the director who has the best feel for and the most knowledge of anamorphic staging. If The Interpreter is fluid and smartly thought-out, that’s Sydney Pollack.

“I encouraged Sydney to do long scenes with shot and reverse, just observing the actors,” continues Khondji. “It’s very classic: a wide shot, an over-the-shoulder, a tighter shot, and sometimes a very tight close-up.” This approach stemmed from watching Penn and Kidman in action. “When Sean was acting, I sometimes felt the way a cinematographer probably felt having Marlon Brando, in his greatest days, in front of the camera, or sometimes Robert Mitchum. Sean’s face has so much character. It’s like the different light of the day, like clouds and sun in a landscape. And Nicole was absolutely haunted by her character. It was just amazing to watch. Why try to find clever camera angles when you have actors like that? Just put the camera there and record, like you’re going to film an anthropology study. I went in with a lot of ideas about remote angles and so forth, each one more clever than the last, but ultimately, I cleaned everything off.”

Khondji’s love of actors was evident in his attention to lighting, says Pollack. “Darius has the ability to work very tight with faces, and a lot of cinematographers don’t. They can be very good with movement, but they don’t want to take the time to really model a face; they consider it slick, in a way. But Darius was extremely careful with Sean and Nicole and took the time to do that. The films I do are character-driven, so it’s important to take some time with [actors].”

One of Khondji’s favorite sets to light was Sylvia’s East Village apartment, which Secret Service agents surveil from an apartment directly across the street. At a critical point in the film, Sylvia realizes she is being watched and calls Agent Teller. Peering out from her darkened apartment, she watches Teller watching her. To accomplish the scene, the production built the top three floors of both building exteriors on stage at the Bedford Avenue Armory in Brooklyn. “The scene was very complicated to do,” says Khondji.  “We built a platform with tracks, and we tracked toward Sean — wide shot, then closer and closer to tight shot, and then over his shoulder to her. The progression of lighting in Sylvia’s apartment was very precise; she had to turn off some light, but there would still be a bit of light coming from the bathroom. Sydney was very meticulous about what he wanted for the scene.

“I’ve always wanted to [re-create] street lights coming into an apartment at night,” continues Khondji. “I started to explore that on a European film I photographed very early on. If there are a lot of lights around the neighborhood and you turn out the apartment lights, your eyes get used to the darkness, and you gradually feel the outside lights become very strong in their patterns, the light of the cars from down below, the moonlight. It’s a classic film-noir feeling, and that’s what I wanted to reproduce.”

To conjure that look, the crew started by positioning a couple of small practicals in the bathroom to backlight Kidman. They draped heavy muslin across the ceiling and used small lamps on dimmers to enhance the feeling of light bouncing off the ceiling from outside. To suggest ambient city light filtering into the apartment, the team placed three lightly diffused 5K Skypans gelled with 1⁄2 CTO, Apricot, or 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 Plus Green at the base of both buildings. At least one 20K with 1⁄2 CTO and 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 Plus Green for a sodium vapor look was used to pick up part of the background building that hides the agents. As the camera moved in closer to Kidman’s face, the actress was lit from within the room by a Kino Flo gelled with 1⁄4 to 1⁄2 Plus Green placed at window level — just enough to echo the light outside. All in all, says Khondji, “it was an exciting mood to create.”

Although The Interpreter continues in the classic style of Pollack’s earlier thrillers, it represents a new phase in the director’s style, one emphasizing more active, handheld camerawork and high-speed dolly work interspersed with the formally framed sections. “I did one dolly shot in the General Assembly on track that was about 60 feet long,” recalls camera operator Craig Haagensen. “Two guys pushed me [down the sloping aisle], and five guys stopped me — that’s how fast I was going. I could feel my hair blowing!”