On the use of black and white photography in contemporary cinema and when it's justified.

Black and white photography in a contemporary film is an automatic aesthetic claim: it says this film is interested in a visual register that is not the default, and it often says this film wants to be associated with a tradition of cinema that black and white photography represents.

Sometimes this is earned. Frances Ha uses black and white to locate itself in the French New Wave tradition and the location is thematically relevant. Belfast uses black and white for childhood memory sequences in a way that creates a specific temporal quality. Ida uses black and white as a formal correlative for its subject: a Poland still partly living in monochrome moral categories.

Sometimes it's not earned. Black and white as a prestige signal — as a way of indicating that this is Serious Cinema — is visible in films where the choice adds nothing specific to the subject. The Lighthouse's black and white is earned because it's located in a specific tradition (silent expressionism) that the film is consciously in dialogue with.

The question for any black and white choice is: does the choice change what the film means, or does it just change how the film looks?