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| Andrew Garfield stars in Hacksaw Ridge, which is nominated for Best Editing. |
Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s
Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be
sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of
the Academy’s 24 categories and more.
Best Editing
The nominees are:
Arrival
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
La La Land
Moonlight
In general, the Academy likes to see its crafts up on the screen.
The movies that win in the below-the-line categories are often the biggest, the
boldest, or the flashiest in the bunch, which usually makes it easy to pick a
winner. When it comes to nominations, this maxim often holds true as well.
However, the editors branch can be more particular, more discerning in its
tastes. Oh, they go for flashy as often as the Academy at large, but they also
fall for far subtler work that would likely miss the eye of a non-expert in the
field.
Smaller human dramas such as Spotlight
last year and Dallas Buyers Club
three years ago, as well as Moonlight
this year, can garner a nomination in this category. This is because editors
can see the work their fellow craftspeople put into building stories and
characters scene by scene, shot by shot, and frame by frame. These movies
rarely threaten for the win because those outside the craft may be hard-pressed
to identify the nuances of the work, but the nominations reflect a willingness
within the branch to look closer and really consider what “best” means.
While the five nominees this year all come from the Best Picture
lineup, the two awards are no longer as closely linked as they once were since
Best Picture expanded beyond five nominees. In the seven years since that
change, only two films have won both awards, whereas in the seven years prior,
they matched five of seven times. With that in mind, this is an interesting
year because the presumed Best Picture frontrunner and potential crafts
juggernaut does not feature the flashiest work in this category. That belongs
to our first nominee below.
Hacksaw
Ridge – This film was a dicey proposition for a couple reasons. First,
there are the obvious and legitimate concerns about honoring a film by an
artist as troubled as Mel Gibson, an issue we will discuss at greater length
later this month. However, this is also a war film about a pacifist, leaving
potential audiences to wonder just how exciting a film with such a description
could possibly be. The answer: remarkably so. Hacksaw Ridge builds to become one of the most harrowing portraits
of war this side of the D-Day landing in Saving
Private Ryan.
Nominated editor John Gilbert uses the natural rhythms of battle
to create a push-and-pull dynamic that leaves the viewer breathless. As soon as
the characters have a quiet moment to reflect on their predicament – and to let
the viewer catch up – the next brutal reminder of war and its carnage is at
hand. Gilbert is a previous nominee for his work on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and while this cannot match
that film’s epic scale, it more than exceeds it for emotional intensity. What
is most impressive, perhaps, are the cuts Gilbert chooses not to make, letting
moments linger so that the audience can engage in the full depths of what we
are witnessing.
Hell
or High Water – Director David Mackenzie’s southern bank robbers
saga is a thriller of the highest order. From its opening tracking shot to is
elegiac epilogue, we know we are in the hands of a master storyteller. The
world of the film is so well established at every step the audience is never
left fishing for answers about motivations or logic. It is spelled out and
plainspoken like the characters the story portrays. Hell or High Water is a heart-pounding tale that lets off the gas
at just the right moments to delve into the humanity and loss that exist at its
core.
Jake Roberts is a first-time nominee who made his name in European
character dramas such as Starred Up
and Riot Club, but his best-known
previous work is probably last year’s Best Picture-nominated romance Brooklyn. This brand of storytelling is
180 degrees from anything like Roberts’ previous work, but he adapts his style
wonderfully to the rhythms and cadences of the American southwest. With two
other films likely leading the way in this category, Roberts could end up the
beneficiary of a split vote and surprise with a win, which would be wholly
deserved.
La
La Land – Even if we accept the term “musical” as a relatively nebulous
concept, I think we are safe in saying no musical has won this award since Chicago in 2002 and before that All That Jazz in 1979. Depending on your
definition, no musical has even been nominated for this award since Walk the Line in 2005. However, when
your film carries the record-tying nominations haul of writer-director Damien
Chazelle’s La La Land, precedents are
bound to fall.
Editor Tom Cross is the only previous winner nominated this year, having
taken home the award for his only previous nomination, Chazelle’s last film, Whiplash. Interestingly, like that
earlier collaboration, La La Land
builds to an emotionally powerful climax that is a masterclass in montage,
worthy of recognition in its own right. However, while that sequence rightly
calls attention to itself, much of Cross’ best work in the film is seamless
like the “single” take song-and-dance number that opens the film, which is in
fact several shorter takes stitched together. From beginning to end, Cross is
integral to every step of the film’s success.
Arrival – A movie
that is ultimately about how we experience time was bound to be a tricky feat
of editing. Editor Joe Walker and director Denis Villeneuve step up to the
challenge, employing a series of flash-forwards, flashbacks, and flashbacks
within flash-forwards to establish the circular nature of the film’s
storytelling. There is no linear way to tell this story, and Walker embraces
that as an opportunity to find new ways to shepherd the audience through the
film’s vertiginous narrative.
Walker was previously nominated for his work on Best Picture
winner 12 Years a Slave and probably
just missed out on a nomination last year for the drug-war thriller Sicario. Villeneuve also brought Walker
on board for his Blade Runner sequel,
Blade Runner 2049, due out later this
year. Walker’s gift with Arrival is
to take a story that could be too twisty or involuted in less capable hands and
to make it palatable and comprehensible without sacrificing its
quintessentially loopy plot.
Moonlight – We
talked yesterday about Bradford Young becoming the first black American
nominated for Best Cinematography by the Academy, and today, we shift to
another bit of history. Joi McMillon is the first black woman nominated for
Best Editing. Another barrier broken, and yet still more to fall. McMillon is
joined in the nomination by co-editor Nat Sanders. Both are first-time
nominees, and both were students with writer-director Barry Jenkins at Florida
State film school.
Much attention has been paid to the emotional reality of Moonlight and the way it maintains the
truth at the core of its characters over the 20-plus years the story takes
place. Credit due of course to the wonderful script and performances, but it
becomes McMillon’s and Sanders’ task to find and establish the thread that
carries the film from start to finish. This is easily the subtlest work of the
nominees and, therefore, the least likely winner, but Moonlight does not become the remarkable film it is without the
contributions of McMillon and Sanders.
The final analysis
The America Cinema Editors guild, which overlaps with the editors
branch of the Academy, named its winners last week, awarding La La Land in its comedy category and Arrival in its drama category. While La La Land was not up against any of its
fellow nominees here, Arrival beat
out the other three Oscar nominees – Hacksaw
Ridge, Hell or High Water, and Moonlight. That would seem to position La La Land and Arrival against each other for the win.
However, the members of the editors guild are almost certainly
more likely to recognize the degree of difficulty in editing Arrival than the Academy at large, who
may be more wooed by the bolder strokes of Hacksaw
Ridge. Ultimately – and you may as well get used to hearing this now – the
award is La La Land’s to lose, and I
would not bet on it losing.
Will win: La La
Land
Should
win: Hacksaw Ridge
Should
have been here: O.J.: Made in America
Tomorrow:
Best Production Design
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