OVP: Best Film Editing (2002)
The Nominees Were...
Martin Walsh, Chicago
Thelma Schoonmaker, Gangs of New York
Peter Boyle, The Hours
Michael Horton, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Herve de Luze, The Pianist
My Thoughts: All right, we took a long break there for a variety of reasons, not least of which was I wanted to re-watch a bunch of the major contenders from 2002 (some of which I haven't seen in literally twenty years), and in the process I took a break, holding up this category specifically since it had several of the repeat viewings. However, I'm largely done with that now, and so in August our primary focus on the blog is going to be on catching up with 2002 races as often as possible (I'll try to throw in other articles along the way, but this is the focus). We'll start today with Best Editing, which featured verbatim the entire Best Picture lineup.
We're going to start with the film I saw again most recently, The Pianist. The movie's one of the longer nominees, which for me always signals some concerns in terms of "editing" as I do value brevity in a story. But a movie can justify its length when it does what The Pianist does, and shows a long, slow arch for a man that is still trying to find himself. This is a difficult movie to sustain, not least of which because it's largely one man's journey for large swaths, which can feel repetitive & sometimes meandering, but we never get that sense of The Pianist. Every moment in the film feels essential to understand what happens next, and it's a long decrescendo until the absolution (or what can be achieved after so much loss) of the ending.
The same cannot be said for Gangs of New York. I've talked on here about my love of Martin Scorsese's movies many times, but I'll own that I didn't like Gangs at all, the most recent film he made where I was a thumbs down. Part of that was because this was Marty's "give me an Oscar already!" phase when he was making prestige dramas rather than his mobster bread-and-butter, and it showed in the way that some of the performances & romances don't land (everything about Cameron Diaz in this movie is unsuccessful), as well as the repetitive nature of Leo's lack of growth as a character. The framing and some of the music for the fight scenes would become appropriately iconic, so it's not a complete bust (and it'll fare better in other tech categories), but here...I'm not interested.
The same is true for Chicago, a movie I liked much better than Gangs but I think is unsuccessfully edited. All of Rob Marshall's musicals struggle in terms of staging and cinematography, and of them all Chicago does the best job, but that's faint praise. I don't like the way that the musical numbers sometimes read as stage shows and other times feel like they're more encompassing, and the dancing sequences feel over-edited. Like Gangs, there's good here ("All That Jazz" works pretty much flawlessly, taking an iconic Broadway number and making it an essential cinematic moment), but some of the film's later musical numbers, particularly "Razzle Dazzle," fall short by comparison.
The Two Towers is, for my money, the best of Peter Jackson's sextet of Tolkien movies, and part of that lies in the way the film is cut. You have a situation where you have a key, integral character who is not just CGI but also stop-motion, so you have to make sure the seams are not showing on this performance in the process. That you never have that issue, and that what seems like a real person feels so ingrained in the movie, is arresting. Add on the fact that we take three divergent stories (the ones populated by Frodo/Sam, Merry/Pippin, & all of Helm's Deep) that feel cohesive and part of the same conversation, and you've got a truly great nomination.
But it has serious competition with The Hours. I have read Michael Cunningham's book, and it's insane to me that someone read this novel and thought "let's make a movie out of it" there are so many specific layers in the book that feel impossible to film. But we get them all in Stephen Daldry's tale of women experiencing the same day in different capacities. The overlaps are both underlined ("Mrs. Dalloway said she'd by the flowers herself") and subtler (look at the way the women eventually end up at the same level of resolve even if they're reaching it in very different ways). Working these three stories into something cohesive took the skills of not just a fine writer, but a brilliant editor, and this stands up as maybe the best example of the "multiple stories blending" trend that dominated prestige pictures in the Aughts.
Other Precursor Contenders: The ACE Eddie Awards separate their categories between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have ten nominations here. Obviously for Comedy/Musical Chicago is the victor, taking out About a Boy, Adaptation, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Punch-Drunk Love while Drama went to Gangs of New York against About Schmidt, Minority Report, The Hours, and The Two Towers. BAFTA went with City of God for Best Editing (it was submitted for Foreign Language Film in 2002, but since it wasn't chosen it was eligible at the 2003 Oscars, and it was nominated for Best Editing there) atop Chicago, Gangs of New York, The Hours, & The Two Towers. Given that City of God was ineligible, I'm a bit at a loss for which film was in sixth place. My gut says it was probably Road to Perdition, given that was in contention for Best Picture and did well in tech awards, but if you want to make an argument for Spider-Man, Minority Report, or even Frida I wouldn't argue with you.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I definitely would've found room for Minority Report, which in my opinion is the best straight-up action film of this century. The chase sequences, world building, timing of a complex mythology-it's all stupendous, and deserves more love when people name-check Spielberg's best movies.
Oscar's Choice: In what might be a first for me, I genuinely couldn't remember who won this while I was writing this article, but it makes sense that it was Chicago. I would assume that, give or take Best Actor, this was Gangs of New York's best shot at a trophy and it was probably in second place.
My Choice: A truly tough contest between The Hours and The Two Towers. From a sheer storytelling perspective, I think that The Hours should probably take it, but by a hair's breadth I'm giving it to The Two Towers which is not only the most succinct of the original Jackson trilogy, but also because it does so much with its CGI in a way that we'd soon learn would be a high-bar for visual effects. Behind them are The Pianist, Gangs of New York, and Chicago in back.
Those are my thoughts-what are yours? Do you prefer The Two Towers over in my corner, or are you tapping your toes to Chicago? Why do you think that Oscar went 5/5 with its Best Picture lineup here (there's usually at least one new name in the bunch)? And with very little guidance as to what it might be, who is your guess for sixth place? Share your thoughts below!
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