Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.
Best Editing
The nominees are:
Anatomy of a Fall
The Holdovers
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Anatomy of a Fall
What we see and when and how much of it means everything in Justine Triet’s maximally tense legal thriller. Triet and nominated editor Laurent Sénéchal portion out information so deliberately and methodically that it borders on excruciating – in the best way possible. Attempting to piece together the threads of a story that bounces back and forth in time, that relies on unreliable narrators, that has no intention of giving you the full picture was one of the most enthralling experiences at the movies this year.
Sénéchal has cut Triet’s past three films and the two clearly have a remarkable working chemistry and all the makings of a creative partnership that could prove to be very special. Even if she doesn’t pull off the win here, Sénéchal can console herself with having already won the César Award (the French Oscars), the European Film Award, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for her work on this film.
The Holdovers
Speaking of fruitful creative pairings, Kevin Tent has been the editor on every single film by Alexander Payne to this point. You cannot achieve the balance of acerbic wit and sincere emotion that Payne traffics in without an editor who knows how to make a joke fly and a dramatic moment land. For The Holdovers, Tent makes terrific use of that very specific skill set, preventing Payne from ever flying too close to the sun with a story that could easily veer into the maudlin. Tent’s only previous nomination came for Payne’s The Descendants.
Killers of the Flower Moon
I’m not sure what else there is to say about Thelma Schoonmaker at this point. She’s absolutely a living legend, not only one of the greatest film editors of all time but one of the most important film artists of any kind. Her collaborations with Martin Scorsese represent one of the most significant film partnerships in the history of the medium. It is basically impossible to overstate Schoonmaker’s effect on shaping the direction of filmmaking over the past 50-plus years.
This is her ninth career Academy Award nomination, breaking a tie with Steven Spielberg’s longtime editor, Michael Kahn. She and Kahn are two of just four people to win this award three times. The others are Ralph Dawson, who won all three of his awards in the 1930s, and Daniel Mandell, who won his third award for The Apartment in 1960.
With this nomination, Schoonmaker has now received a nod from the Academy in six consecutive decades over a span of 53 years. Her first nomination came for the documentary Woodstock in 1970. She has won for Raging Bull in 1980, The Aviator in 2004, and The Departed in 2006. Killers of the Flower Moon is yet another masterpiece in the Schoonmaker-Scorsese canon. Beautifully paced, it’s a three-hour and 26-minute movie that never drags for one second. It’s a magic trick, and Schoonmaker is the Houdini of the editing bay.
Oppenheimer
I know I keep coming back to the Trinity test sequence in talking about the crafts of Oppenheimer and that that particular sequence takes up less than 10 minutes of this film’s three-hour runtime. However, those 10 minutes are a beautiful encapsulation of everything Christopher Nolan’s film does well, and Jennifer Lame’s precision editing may be the greatest of all its virtues. Every second of this series of scenes is perfectly placed to build continuous momentum and extract maximum tension.
Lame (I’m honestly not sure how it’s pronounced) is a first-time nominee working with Nolan for the second time after Tenet. She has worked with Noah Baumbach six times and edited Ari Aster’s first two features, Hereditary and Midsommar. She notably did not edit Aster’s Beau Is Afraid, also from 2023 and a film I can only say would have benefited from her skilled craftsmanship.
Poor Things
I do not call Poor Things a dark comedy, as some others have. I think it’s far more deadpan, and deadpan comedy requires, above all else, deadpan timing. Situation. Statement. Reaction. Boom, boom, boom, one after the other, steady as a drumbeat. For long stretches of this film, Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is a deadpan joke machine, and editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis rings every possible laugh out of every second of film. But, as soon as the mood turns more somber and reflective, the editor slows it down and allows the audience to luxuriate in Bella’s journey of discovery.
Mavropsaridis has worked on every Yorgos Lanthimos film to date and was previously nominated for his work on The Favourite. He’s already lined up to work on Lanthimos’ forthcoming Kinds of Kindness, as well. Mavropsaridis has been relatively prolific within the Greek film industry over the years, but my favorite non-Lanthimos work of his would have to be Alejandro Landes’ Monos from 2019. Just a gorgeous and devastating film that, yes, of course, is tremendously edited.
The final analysis
One of the fascinating things about Best Editing is that a nomination has been highly tied to Best Picture over the years, in that it is quite difficult to win the top prize without being nominated here. However, in recent years, the win is much less important as a bellwether. Since 2010, just two films have won both Editing and Picture: Argo in 2012 and Everything Everywhere All at Once just last year.
So, the Academy is not necessarily tied to the Best Picture frontrunner here and has been known to pick slick, showy work that cries out for attention. This year, though, those things are one and the same, as Oppenheimer probably features the “showiest” editing of any of the nominees this year, which is not meant as a knock, just a point of comparison. The Best Picture momentum, of course, helps, so that’s where the smart money lies.
Will win: Oppenheimer
Should win: Anatomy of a Fall
Should have been here: How to Blow Up a Pipeline
A note about my favorite snub: Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an expertly crafted thriller that manages multiple timelines, hides not one but two major twists, and never slows down for one second. Despite all of this, the audience is never lost. Editor Daniel Garber is able to lead viewers through all of the intertwined storylines while helping Goldhaber investigate grander themes without ever losing one ounce of tension.
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