OVP: Best Film Editing (2018)
The Nominees Were...
Barry Alexander Brown, BlacKkKlansman
John Ottman, Bohemian Rhapsody
Yorgos Mavropsaridis, The Favourite
Patrick J. Don Vito, Green Book
Hank Corwin, Vice
My Thoughts: The first two categories we always profile for these series are the Makeup & Visual Effects categories, and generally there's 1-2 (at most) Best Picture nominees in that bunch. Today we move into Film Editing, which in the era of the 5+ nominees, is nearly always Best Picture-dominated, and that's the case for 2018. So essentially we've had our appetizers, and today we hit the main course of our discussion, including our Best Picture winner and four of its vanquished foes. We also get to perhaps the weakest Editing field I can recall in recent memory.
Since I don't want to start on the negative, we'll commence with BlacKkKlansman, one of the better options in this lineup. Spike Lee's pictures frequently have a similar pacing, something a bit more frenetic with detours into what Lee is trying to illustrate with his larger comic set-pieces, and that happens here. The movie juggles too many plot lines, and suffers from trying to cram too much history into one picture. But this is still a well-paced film, particularly considering its 2+ hour length, and Brown smartly keeps a lot of the great chemistry in the movie between leads John David Washington & Adam Driver. It's also a good movie, and while craft categories shouldn't be judged based on the quality of the films, it's hard to have a film that is well-edited that's not very good otherwise.
A decent example of that is Green Book. Green Book is problematic as hell, but it's also a good example of how a movie can be "okay" in terms of its production design even if it's spouting an inappropriate belief system. The film has a beginning, middle, and end, with the appropriate amount of time spent on each chapter. This is low praise, but considering where I'm going with some of the other films highlighted here, Green Book at least has editing that makes the film feel on sturdy ground. That said, the editors could have done a lot more to make the conversations between Mortensen & Ali less troublesome (like, say, cutting the "fried chicken" scene entirely), and I'm not going to give them credit for the film's worrisome racial overtones, even if that's what the script is calling for-both need to go down with this ship.
But Green Book is a movie that has a focus, even if it's a questionable one. Vice reads as the deranged confessions of a liberal film director sporadically throwing think pieces at a wall, like so much fallen spaghetti. I didn't mind Adam McKay's The Big Short even though it plays weaker in retrospect, but his use of random asides doesn't feel as organic in Vice (with Amy Adams' ridiculous Shakespearean scene or Christian Bale randomly addressing the camera at the end), and more like a directing/editing team that didn't know what the word "no" meant (or had no one to spout it). Vice is a sloppy, gross mess, one whose politics I can't even claim are in the right place by the end it so misunderstands the legacy of Dick Cheney. It is offensive, and the editing is amateurish.
And speaking of amateurish, let's not forget that the Academy not only nominated, but also gave the Oscar to Bohemian Rhapsody, which (whatever you think of the quality of Freddie Mercury's brilliant music) is an ugly piece of dreck when it comes to the actual picture. This is best illustrated by the now-infamous scene where Queen meets John Reid, and we get (during a simple conversation between men over drinks), a series of jump cuts that give you whiplash. There's no logical reason for this-it's just a conversation, and yet you'd think you were watching a Liam Neeson chase sequence in Taken considering how badly patched together the scenes are of five men sitting down. It's possibly the worst editing I've ever seen in one of these write-ups, and the fact that it won is...one of the more shameful chapters for the Oscars in terms of bad taste.
All of this is to say, god save the Queen (Anne). The Favourite is the one movie in this chunk that actually understands pacing, and ways of using the editing to underline character points. Think of the many scenes in the same hallways and drawing rooms, underlining the grand monotony of the Queen (and her two consorts') lives, playing a game of cat-and-mouse completely unfettered from the world. The editing is also used for humor, sometimes pretty black humor (Joe Alwyn's wedding night sequence being one of the cheekier examples), but humor that sets the film's many sharp detours without making it feel disjointed.
Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards split their categories between Drama and Comedy/Musical. The Drama winner was Bohemian Rhapsody, besting A Star is Born, BlacKkKlansman, First Man, and Roma, while Comedy went with The Favourite over Crazy Rich Asians, Deadpool 2, Green Book, and Vice. BAFTA gave its trophy to Vice, here over Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, First Man, and Roma. In terms of sixth place, it had to have been Roma, right-perhaps the Editing branch didn't want to bestow a fifth nomination to Alfonso Cuaron, and that's what cost him one?
Films I Would Have Nominated: I'd have had no problem nominating Cuaron, let me tell you. I honestly would restart this category from scratch, throwing in something like First Man as well (I'll do my official ballot at the end of this season), but Roma missing is pretty unforgivable considering how beautifully it flows & that it was nominated virtually everywhere else.
Oscar's Choice: For reasons that are only known between God and PriceWaterhouse, Bohemian Rhapsody won this Oscar, likely over Vice.
My Choice: Not even close-it's an easy win for The Favourite, the only worthy nominee of this bunch. BlacKkKlansman is next, leaps ahead of third place Green Book, and I'll end with Vice and Bohemian Rhapsody.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Does anyone want to actually defend Bohemian Rhapsody, or are we all comfortable just pretending The Favourite won this trophy? Are we all frightened of what Adam McKay's next movie is going to be like after he didn't get a slap-on-the-hand over the mess of Vice? And where the hell is Roma? Share your thoughts below!
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