OVP: Best Film Editing (2006)
The Nominees Were...
Stephen Mirrione & Douglas Crise, Babel
Steven Rosenblum, Blood Diamond
Alex Rodriguez & Alfonso Cuaron, Children of Men
Thelma Schoonmaker, The Departed
Clare Douglas, Christopher Rouse, & Richard Pearson, United 93
My Thoughts: We always take these ballots in the same order, and so I kind of have an idea of how they'll go in terms of introducing different films to the conversation. The first two (Makeup & Visual Effects...links below to tons of past Oscar Viewing Project contests), occasionally feature films we'll discuss a bit more as the weeks go on, but more-often-than-not they are one-and-done characters, with us really kicking off the year with Best Film Editing, which comes third. While all of these films are movies that are going to show up again in the coming weeks, there's a catch here-usually this category is dominated by Best Picture nominees, but in 2006 that's not the case. In one of the final races before they expanded the field, Oscar gave us only two Best Picture nominees, with the other three being the kinds of films that clearly would've made it in an expanded field, but were just misses in the Best Picture field. This means differentiation (hooray) but if you're waiting for The Queen or Little Miss Sunshine, you're going to have to wait a few more weeks.
We'll start with one of the two Best Picture nominees they did pick, Babel. Babel is the kind of movie that screams "EDITING!" and was part of a trend in the 2000's of movies where we have multiple starry plotlines that eventually intersect into one major story, but you don't know initially how they'll crossover (the other two most prominent examples are Traffic and Crash, both Best Picture nominees themselves). The editing works, to a degree-it definitely doesn't feel like it's tonally off between the stories, or we aren't speeding toward an ending that will work for the films. But Babel doesn't have equally interesting stories between each chapter, and its dour & depressing attitude makes it a hard film to feel consistently tethered toward. Movies like this, especially heavy ones, need you to root for all of the characters at roughly the same pitch, and since you don't (or I didn't), much of the film I spent thinking "when are they getting back to the characters I actually care about?"
The other nominee is The Departed, one of the many long films that Martin Scorsese should thank his lucky stars he has Thelma Schoonmaker for. Schoonmaker's genius as an editor is making long movies feel like they're not only going quickly, but that they require the length to ground the characters. Like all of Scorsese's films, there are scenes that might have been trimmed to make the story a little more cogent, and certainly when it comes to Matt Damon's character, there are problems with the way he's portrayed (there's just not enough there in Damon's performance-a weirdly off performance from an actor who seems well-suited for this role). But upon revisiting The Departed recently, I was reminded that what makes Scorsese's multi-character stories so successful is that what might seem extemporaneous in an initial viewing is what you gravitate toward more in a later viewing. As a result, The Departed, a layered look at corruption, class, & our complicated relationship with authority, justifies its length (and Schoonmaker's nomination).
This is not the case for the other Leonardo DiCaprio film, Blood Diamond. The movie is too long, and totally shortchanges the love story. When you need your main character (Leo) to behave totally out-of-character from the get-go by falling for Jennifer Connelly's reporter, you need the editing team to cobble something that resembles chemistry between the two leads. The editing room is not helped by actors & writers who don't know how to make this story work, and I wouldn't normally rag too hard on Rosenblum as editing isn't really the reason that Blood Diamond doesn't work, but the Academy decided to nominate it, so I am left with little recourse. A plodding, meandering movie that doesn't know how to sell its adventure scenes, political message, or central romance.
The final two nominees are of another level, though, when it comes to the editing room. United 93 is a film I didn't see at the time, but revisited much later, and was totally blown away by its power & structure, particularly for a film where every person in the audience knows the ending. That's a really tall task for editors forced to try to make a compelling narrative, but it's a testament to director Paul Greengrass & his team of editors that we do, in fact, spend the second half of this movie trying to rewrite history. The editors play on our assumption that "the good guys always win" by putting handsome leading actors like Peter Herrmann & Cheyenne Jackson front-and-center, our movie subconscious assuming they'll save the passengers even from the most dire of circumstances, but this is, of course, not what will happen. A triumphant movie.
Children of Men is a similar success. A bit forgotten at the time (it was not a hit at the box office), it has since been hailed as a landmark movie, and one of the best pictures of the decade (including by me). The editing is one of the central reasons it's so successful. The chase sequences (particularly the attack in the car), and the way we feel like we're inside the vehicle is a combination of masterful cinematography & judicious editing, while other scenes, where we see figures on the periphery & reminders of what is happening in this world, give us so much world-building that lesser editors might have cut in favor of more action or shots of our stars. Children of Men's chilling final scenes only work as a result of slow-building tension, brought to us in the editing room.
Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards split their categories between Drama and Comedy/Musical, and the Drama nominees actually ended in a tie between The Departed and Babel (besting United 93, Casino Royale, and The Queen) while Comedy/Musical went to Dreamgirls over Little Miss Sunshine, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Thank You for Smoking, and The Devil Wears Prada. United 93 won the trophy at the BAFTA Awards, here over Babel, Casino Royale, The Departed, and The Queen. In terms of sixth place, this is tricky. The Queen is the most logical option, because it's a Best Picture nominee & scored with both of the precursors (Casino Royale's shutout with Oscar makes me think that was more of a BAFTA thing in terms of momentum), and I'm not opposed to this idea, but I'm going to guess it was Letters from Iwo Jima. This was a bigger deal with Oscar than anywhere else, and it's a war film, which is usually catnip here. I think it just missed, potentially in favor of Blood Diamond or Children of Men.
Films I Would Have Nominated: Cumulatively, this is a better field than Oscar came up with for Best Picture, to be honest. I think if they were really getting outside-the-box, though, they would have picked Inside Man (making Clive Owen, not Leonardo DiCaprio, the doubly-blessed star here), as that movie is so reliant upon sharp editing and building a guessing-game in your head over what is happening.
Oscar's Choice: Thelma took her third (to date) Oscar, almost certainly over the team from Babel.
My Choice: A genuinely close race for me, honestly, and it is simply the fact that Children of Men is the slightly better movie that is winning it this trophy over United 93-both will be showing up again as medalists in my personal ballot in a few weeks. In third is The Departed, followed by Babel & Blood Diamond.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you want to stick to Team Thelma (a team I'm always happy to root for) or are you over with me voting for Children of Men? Anyone got any theories as to why Blood Diamond of all things got cited here instead of one of the Best Picture nominees? And was it The Queen, Casino Royale, or Letters from Iwo Jima who just missed here? Share your thoughts below!
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