OVP: Best Film Editing (2013)
The Nominees Were...
Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Lee Smith, The Dark Knight
Mike Hill and Dan Hanley, Frost/Nixon
Elliot Graham, Milk
Chris Dickens, Slumdog Millionaire
Lee Smith, The Dark Knight
Mike Hill and Dan Hanley, Frost/Nixon
Elliot Graham, Milk
Chris Dickens, Slumdog Millionaire
My Thoughts: I frequently talk about how editing is the weirdest category to vote for at the Oscars. After all, you never know what sort of train wreck the editors are going to leave you, and potentially the best editing was done on raising a film from dreadful to merely bad. Still, that's not really how the Academy treats this category, unfortunately (it usually serves as a shadow category for Best Picture, one that shows you that it might be time to start mentally spending the office pool). Still, I'm going to attempt to rescue the category a bit and not just make it about what the best picture is, but which one is best spliced together.
We'll start out, since we haven't gotten to it yet, with Slumdog Millionaire, our first foray into the eventual Best Picture nominee. Part of why I have been dreading this particular OVP year is that the Best Picture lineup is not what I'd call "my favorite." While I personally nominated two of the films nominated in my own Best Picture lineup (ah, ah, ah, I'm not playing that card quite yet), the overall year of 2008 was just okay and the films I didn't nominate I didn't really respond to at all and didn't age particularly well. That said, the editing in Slumdog Millionaire at least is interesting. The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire framing device is dated, but it's hardly uneffective and actually works to bookend major scenes whereas other movies might have had trouble telling a life story without such clear chapters. While I have problems with the overall plotting of the film, that's really more on the screenplay in this case than just the editors, as the editors do a serviceable job and that's not really one of my complaints about Danny Boyle's picture.
Frost/Nixon, one of the other Best Picture nominees that we haven't gotten to quite yet, isn't quite as forgiven for their inclusion in this category. The movie certainly has that poshness to it that a Ron Howard film generally does-the handsomeness that comes with a movie that clearly had experienced behind-the-scenes talent, though I always quibble over how much Howard seems obsessed with just the male point-of-view (when there are female characters in Frost/Nixon, he doesn't make any of them remotely stand out). The movie, however, has no real urgency-there's nothing in this film that says "this is impressively edited," and frequently falls into such conventional beats that you know exactly what's about to happen even if it's supposed to be tantalizing and behind-the-scenes. Nothing special to see here.
Our final Best Picture nominee that hasn't been discussed yet is another political biopic, Milk. Here, we've got a considerably better and more interestingly edited film. While Frost/Nixon sticks to convention, Milk cares about not only its main character but the movement that his life and death started. The film frequently shows crowd shots interspersed with Harvey's life. We see shots of Harvey from the vantage point of the crowd rather than in close-up, and the film lingers upon the men in Harvey's life, particularly James Franco as his trophy-boyfriend, and includes little touches that give Sean Penn's performance in particular room to grow. I love the way that they include day-to-day aspects of his life like his interactions with coworkers as they walk down the hall or the background reactions of a bunch of gay dudes as they ogle a cute pizza delivery guy. It's these sorts of touches that the editor can include to elevate a film and give it a distinctive flavor.
Since we're in Best Picture territory, it's worth noting that once again we are investing some time in one Benjamin Button, that reverse-aging man. This film definitely needs editing the most, and not just because of the length but because the film requires inserted story to not just make the film a one-note gimmick of Visual Effects and Makeup. The movie partially succeeds in this-we see a lot of the romance late in the film between Benjamin and Daisy, two oceans slowly passing through and the film gives us an urgency to their lives (that middle won't last forever) by staying long enough but not too long on the center of the story. However, earlier scenes occasionally veer into Forrest Gump territory where you're just trying to put Benjamin into historical situations and characters that aren't named Benjamin and Daisy (like Queenie) usually are dismissed by the editors when it feels like Benjamin would have had a place for them in his long story.
The final nominee is the film that famously missed the Best Picture race. The Dark Knight has one major problem that hurts it in a lot of story and screenplay situations-it's the type of film that has what I call a "balance problem"-the film is never as full of life and energy as it is when the Joker isn't onscreen. Heath Ledger is so good in the movie that in particular with the late development of Two-Face, we see that the film has veered into less rewarding territory. The film was hindered by Ledger's untimely death (it's hard not to see the movie ending with him in some fashion), but that doesn't mean that they can cop out and rush the Two-Face story just to fill in the gaps, as it feels shellacked together. The first 90 minutes of the film are robust, action-packed, but the final third costs the film pretty dramatically in this department.
We'll start out, since we haven't gotten to it yet, with Slumdog Millionaire, our first foray into the eventual Best Picture nominee. Part of why I have been dreading this particular OVP year is that the Best Picture lineup is not what I'd call "my favorite." While I personally nominated two of the films nominated in my own Best Picture lineup (ah, ah, ah, I'm not playing that card quite yet), the overall year of 2008 was just okay and the films I didn't nominate I didn't really respond to at all and didn't age particularly well. That said, the editing in Slumdog Millionaire at least is interesting. The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire framing device is dated, but it's hardly uneffective and actually works to bookend major scenes whereas other movies might have had trouble telling a life story without such clear chapters. While I have problems with the overall plotting of the film, that's really more on the screenplay in this case than just the editors, as the editors do a serviceable job and that's not really one of my complaints about Danny Boyle's picture.
Frost/Nixon, one of the other Best Picture nominees that we haven't gotten to quite yet, isn't quite as forgiven for their inclusion in this category. The movie certainly has that poshness to it that a Ron Howard film generally does-the handsomeness that comes with a movie that clearly had experienced behind-the-scenes talent, though I always quibble over how much Howard seems obsessed with just the male point-of-view (when there are female characters in Frost/Nixon, he doesn't make any of them remotely stand out). The movie, however, has no real urgency-there's nothing in this film that says "this is impressively edited," and frequently falls into such conventional beats that you know exactly what's about to happen even if it's supposed to be tantalizing and behind-the-scenes. Nothing special to see here.
Our final Best Picture nominee that hasn't been discussed yet is another political biopic, Milk. Here, we've got a considerably better and more interestingly edited film. While Frost/Nixon sticks to convention, Milk cares about not only its main character but the movement that his life and death started. The film frequently shows crowd shots interspersed with Harvey's life. We see shots of Harvey from the vantage point of the crowd rather than in close-up, and the film lingers upon the men in Harvey's life, particularly James Franco as his trophy-boyfriend, and includes little touches that give Sean Penn's performance in particular room to grow. I love the way that they include day-to-day aspects of his life like his interactions with coworkers as they walk down the hall or the background reactions of a bunch of gay dudes as they ogle a cute pizza delivery guy. It's these sorts of touches that the editor can include to elevate a film and give it a distinctive flavor.
Since we're in Best Picture territory, it's worth noting that once again we are investing some time in one Benjamin Button, that reverse-aging man. This film definitely needs editing the most, and not just because of the length but because the film requires inserted story to not just make the film a one-note gimmick of Visual Effects and Makeup. The movie partially succeeds in this-we see a lot of the romance late in the film between Benjamin and Daisy, two oceans slowly passing through and the film gives us an urgency to their lives (that middle won't last forever) by staying long enough but not too long on the center of the story. However, earlier scenes occasionally veer into Forrest Gump territory where you're just trying to put Benjamin into historical situations and characters that aren't named Benjamin and Daisy (like Queenie) usually are dismissed by the editors when it feels like Benjamin would have had a place for them in his long story.
The final nominee is the film that famously missed the Best Picture race. The Dark Knight has one major problem that hurts it in a lot of story and screenplay situations-it's the type of film that has what I call a "balance problem"-the film is never as full of life and energy as it is when the Joker isn't onscreen. Heath Ledger is so good in the movie that in particular with the late development of Two-Face, we see that the film has veered into less rewarding territory. The film was hindered by Ledger's untimely death (it's hard not to see the movie ending with him in some fashion), but that doesn't mean that they can cop out and rush the Two-Face story just to fill in the gaps, as it feels shellacked together. The first 90 minutes of the film are robust, action-packed, but the final third costs the film pretty dramatically in this department.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Eddie Awards have nominees for both Drama and Comedy/Musical, so we managed to get all of the Oscar nominees included. The Drama lineup was a carbon copy of the Oscars, with Slumdog Millionaire triumphing over all of the AMPAS nominees. The Comedy nominees included In Bruges, Mamma Mia!, Tropic Thunder, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and the eventually successful WALL-E. The BAFTA Awards weirdly had a tie in the nominations (I don't recall ever seeing this happen there), so there were six nominees with Slumdog once again triumphing, this time over all of the Oscar nominees save Milk, along with In Bruges and Changeling. It's extremely hard to say who would be the sixth place nominee-In Bruges did surprisingly well in the precursors, but my money would be on either Changeling, which did quite well in the precursors or perhaps Iron Man, one of those gigantic tech films that occasionally nabs a nomination for Editing thanks to its Box Office. I'm going to guess Changeling, though if you want to argue for Iron Man in the comments, I won't stop you.
Films I Would Have Nominated: Ooph, this is where my blase attitude toward this year is going to show me up here as really the only arguments I can make are toward films that I simply liked better than this lineup. It's hard to argue, however, that WALL-E, with its tight first act is an editing wonder, or that In Bruges with its brilliant comic pacing both don't deserve nominations. I probably also would have found room for the marital discord of Revolutionary Road.
Oscar's Choice: The start of a long juggernaut for Slumdog Millionaire, with its Best Picture rival Benjamin Button coming in a distant second.
My Choice: I'm going to go with Milk, which has a lot more touches that I found fascinating than any of the other nominees, with The Dark Knight coming in second. Behind that I'll pick Slumdog, Benjamin Button, and finally Frost/Nixon.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Did you agree with Oscar that Slumdog deserved this trophy or are you more with me on Milk? How different would The Dark Knight have felt if Heath Ledger hadn't passed away? Who was in sixth place (a hard argument to make here)? And what 2008 film had the best editing? Share your thoughts in the comments!
No comments:
Post a Comment