OVP: Best Film Editing (2003)
The Nominees Were...
Daniel Rezende, City of God
Walter Murch, Cold Mountain
Jamie Selkirk, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Lee Smith, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
William Goldenberg, Seabiscuit
My Thoughts: After two contests of the exact same nominees, we're heading into Editing this Monday morning, and with that we're getting into three films that were cited for Best Picture (and the two films that were clearly in 6th/7th place of the crowd). 2003 marks a really weird chapter in Oscar/film history, strange mostly because it didn't feel like an odd thing at the time. The year was one of the first to be really dominated by franchise pictures (though in the cases of Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Nemo, we didn't yet know they'd be franchises), and as a result some of the other avenues for success (like movies that aren't primarily geared toward teenage boys) were closing forever. It was also the first time in over a decade that Miramax had not had a film on its own in the race, though it was clear which film the Weinsteins thought was their golden ticket.
Cold Mountain is little-discussed today, but its miss in the Best Picture/Director categories was a big deal in 2003. If you look at magazines predicting the Oscar race that year, they described it as a "sure thing" for the Best Picture race. That snub has tarnished it a bit, but honestly this is the kind of film that's totally up-my-alley. If I'm going to forgive a film for anything, it'll be because it's a slow-burn romance that's perhaps going a bit too slow. That's Cold Mountain, a movie I still hold in high regard. Still, that slowness cannot be denied when it comes to its editing, arguably its weakest element, and I have to assume that though there's nothing bad about it exactly, it was cited here solely because the editing branch thought they were endorsing a gimme Best Picture nominee & felt like they had to cosign.
Miramax did have a surprise pony in the race in City of God, which remains the single-biggest shock in the history of the Oscar nominations for me. There has honestly never been anything like it-a film that came out of nowhere and got into a host of traditional Best Picture positions. City of God was an uneven experience for me, and I will say that the editing is most emblematic of my problems with the picture. There are times when it feels totally fascinating, keeping on a particularly gruesome & shocking killing, and then lingering long enough for us to realize that the villain that is being destroyed is just going to be replaced with more madness & chaos. But other times, it pulls away, sloppily not giving the audience a taste of what the characters are experiencing. This nomination isn't bad, and might have made sense if the movie had been a bigger part of the conversation leading up to the nominations, but as it is I still leave perplexed as to what this is doing here.
Master and Commander is the one entry in this race that Miramax did get into the Best Picture race, albeit as part of a coproduction (Miramax had managed to get in on its own merits every year since 1992). This film suffers in the same way that Cold Mountain does in that it feels more default than particularly well-edited. Master has an upper-hand in that it has to juggle different visual effects shots against real fights at sea (or on a watery soundstage), but the film also doesn't do enough with its characters, and frequently feels like it's underselling moments in the script by not giving us more (particularly the "man overboard" scene where you'll be forgiven if you have no sense of which character is actually dying).
Seabiscuit also has a lot of technical angles you can look at to understand the why behind this nomination. The race sequences are appropriately thrilling, and give you a real transportive aspect to the movie. But Seabiscuit is dull & ordinary whenever you aren't racing. This happens quite often with sports films, where when you pull the camera away from the sports suddenly you are left with cliche & routine, and that's exactly what happens with Seabiscuit. If you're going to falter cinematography nominations that only look good when you have a beautiful sunset but not through the rest of the film, you need to do the same for Seabiscuit, where the editors only seem to care about their favorite parts.
It'd be easy to make a joke about Return of the King being the least-edited of the movies here. It has to be said (and I love this movie, so I don't say this lightly) that the way that Jackson unfolds the endings feels a bit too alien to the rest of the movie, and he should have found a better way to make that happen. But the rest of the movie is so good and well-diced you'll be forgiven for overlooking this. The action sequences are superb, finding a way to tie up the loose ends of 15+ major characters without it feeling belabored, and while the ending never feels in doubt, the climb up Mt. Doom has been parodied & copied repeatedly in the nearly twenty years since for a reason-it's just that good.
Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards split their categories between Drama and Comedy/Musical. Drama went to Return of the King over Cold Mountain, Master and Commander, Mystic River, and Seabiscuit, while Comedy/Musical favored Pirates of the Caribbean against Bend It Like Beckham, Finding Nemo, Lost in Translation, and School of Rock. BAFTA picked Lost in Translation as its victor, here over 21 Grams, Cold Mountain, Kill Bill, and Return of the King. In terms of sixth place, there's a lot of names here but I'm going to get a little bit lazy and assume it was Mystic River, another Best Picture nominee (the editing branch rarely goes with comedies, even serious ones like Lost in Translation, so I'll guess that it gets skipped in favor of the showier Clint Eastwood picture).
Films I Would Have Nominated: Lost in Translation's film schedule is legendary (it was shot in less-than-a-month), but that only adds to the reason to note the editors. They make a film that feels bursting with a ticking clock in every scene, with us not knowing from moment-to-moment what is going to happen next.
Oscar's Choice: Again, Return of the King won every award it was up for, and I don't think this was one of the close ones.
My Choice: Yeah, there might have been some movies that threatened Return of the King's perch here (the multiple endings make it a bit vulnerable in that regard), but against this competition it's an easy choice. Master and Commander, City of God, Cold Mountain, and Seabiscuit come after.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Is this a pretty easy call for Return of the King for all involved, or does someone want to take a shine to a different honoree? Do we think Cold Mountain would've been cited here if they knew it'd be skipped for the top prize? And with a lot of options, who is your vote for sixth place? Share your thoughts below!
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