Oscar Volleys: Best Editing is a Category that Doesn't Know What it Wants to Be
Tuesday, November 22, 2022 at 8:01PM Team Experience will be discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precurosrs. Here's Nick Taylor and Ben Miller with the first volley...
the 4 most recent movies to be nominated for editing that WEREN'T nominated for Best Picture.
BEN: Alright Nick, since I'm starting this conversation, I'll get on a soapbox. I hate what this category has turned into. It used to be a really cool category that highlighted the most underrated aspect of the filmmaking process. Instead, it's turned into Best Picture Redux. In the last ten years, there have been 50 nominees for Best Editing. Only four were not nominated for Best Picture. When did this category get so lazy? Why, of all categories, is this one so linked to Best Picture...
NICK: Hell, I’ll go one further and say that the Academy’s expanded BP lineup has made a lot of craft categories lazier than they ought to be. To me, the history of the Editing category in particular often reads like a home for Picture nominees and also-rans, and having a ten-wide lineup mostly validates that assumption. Does the essentialness of that craft make it especially easy to overlook? “This movie’s good, so of course it’s well-edited”! I’d argue the Academy’s broader taste in genre and tone over the past ten or so years has created enough room to maintain interest in their Editing picks, but it’s still hard to argue much thought was put into their annual ballots.
Everything Everywhere All At OnceThat being said, the Best Picture heaviness of this field is suddenly more interesting for one reason: there’s more action films in contention this year than usual. We have the genre blitzing and timeline-weaving of Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Woman King’s updated swords-and-sandals thrills, Top Gun: Maverick doing something old in an era where such moves feel fresh, the CGI-heavy spectacle of sequels Avatar: The Way of the Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Hell, even outside that field I’m sure we’ll get a couple commenters clamoring for RRR’s extravagant kineticism. Given how much essential editing work is done in sci-fi and action cinema, which the Academy doesn’t tend to notice unless they have to, I’m really curious if they’ll bite for these films. Do any of these feel like contenders to you?
BEN: I think Everything Everywhere All At Once and Top Gun: Maverick are the two slam dunks. Both made great money, both are expected Best Picture and exceptionally edited. Unfortunately, I think that's where we come to an impasse. Best Picture frontrunners have that dreaded "Films rarely win Best Picture without editing nomination" stat. I would be remiss to ignore the editing of The Fabelmans, Women Talking, or The Banshees of Inisherin. The Academy does have potential Best Picture nominees that would be perfectly acceptable in this category. Decision to Leave, All Quiet on the Western Front, Elvis, and (probably) Babylon can factor in.
The Avatar of it all does give me pause. It's the only thing the world hasn't seen, plus the recent re-release of the original brought the hype train back up. If the film is a B+ or better, I would expect tech nominations all over the place. Despite our complaints about it, a lineup of EEAAO, Maverick, Avatar 2, Glass Onion, and The Woman King would be a great lineup for the actual category.
Is there a film you are rooting for that doesn't feel like it has a realistic shot? I think the editing in the predator film Prey was pretty impeccable, but I don't even think it's eligible. The Northman would be a close second.
NICK: We’re at least in agreement on EEAOO and Top Gun: Maverick as likely contenders. The lineup you suggest would be a fun one, though I’m sure we’re gonna have to make room for Fabelmans or Banshees when the time finally comes. Does Elvis’s hopped-up montages give it a “most editing” advantage in this field? Lord knows it and now Babylon get a lot of “look at this coked-up mess!” type of press. Maybe being the musical extravaganza from earlier in the year will give Elvis an advantage. Decision to Leave would be a wonderful nominee, and given the success recent International Feature frontrunners have had at crossing into the wider Oscar race, I think it has a good chance of showing up.
If we’re talking about impossible dreams for this category, I would love to see some recognition for Aftersun. It’s such a fantastic memory piece, capturing a very delicate bond at its final moments in fragmented, tactile ways, and it gets so much poignancy while holding onto the distance between this girl, her dad, and her memories. I also loved the cutting for Benediction, which finds as many ways as possible to keep its audience off guard as it slithers deeper under the skin of its eternally discomforted protagonist. I’m also genuinely curious if TÁR will have any legs here - the editing feels so crucial to carrying its structural ambiguities and increasingly fractured pacing. I’m sure most of the credit will go to Todd Field, but I think Monika Willi’s just as deserving of those hosannas. (I was thrilled to hear this morning that the Spirit Awards agreed, nominating both of them)
How about you? Who are you rooting for whether or not they have a shot?
BEN: I really like the idea of something like Aftersun as a nominee, though I agree it's unrealistic. I would be head over heels with the inclusion of Decision to Leave or All Quiet on the Western Front. War films are popular with the branch but it isn't as flashy or as quick-cutting as you would expect. It's more of a meditative drama than a war epic and the editing supports it perfectly.
Alright, let's get down to it. We've gone over what we want to be nominated, but what do you think is going to happen? I agree about the different varieties of nominees, so that being said, this is what I'm predicting
Babylon
- Top Gun: Maverick
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- The Fabelmans (BP token)
- The Banshees of Inisherin (BP token)
- Babylon (most editing)
You could sub Elvis in "most" or Women Talking into "BP token".
NICK: I’d put TÁR among the Token BP contenders. And I still think Avatar could come in and crash the whole party pretty easily if it's worth the trouble. So, if I had to predict a lineup right now, based on the tea leaves we've been reading and my own hopes for some of the more open slots:
Decision to Leave
- Decision to Leave
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- The Fabelmans
- TÁR
- Top Gun: Maverick
With All Quiet on the Western Front, Avatar: Way of the Water, Babylon, Banshees, and Elvis all in close contention. Surely I'm being optimistic about my choices, but I wanna have hope for the year while I still can (i.e., before nominations start happening at various precursors).
Also, since we're sharing our predictions here's Nathaniel's updated chart. Your turn, readers, what do you think will happen in this category?
Reader Comments (7)
I'd be thrilled if Aftersun made the cut, but after EEAAO and Top Gun, I'd guess The Fabelmans (token), Elvis (most! and I expect it to overperform on nomination morning thanks to the older voters) and I'm hoping TAR.
I think, in the end, it comes down to this.
It will be either EEAAO or Top Gun Maverick (locked winner for Sound, in my opinion).
If EEAAO wins Editing, it's winning AT LEAST Original Screenplay and Picture.
The Power of the Dog should have won Best Editing last year. Bye!
Peggy - totally!
Jesus -- i think Top Gun is winning both editing and sound.
eurocheese -- i'm starting to lean that way too.
For a category that we consider so intrinsically linked to Best Picture, I would like to point out that the last Best Picture winner to also win Best Editing was Argo (which was almost 10 years ago). Granted, only two films have since won Best Picture without a Film Editing nominated (Birdman and CODA), but I feel we've seen a certain divorcing from Best Picture in this category, even if most of the nominees have still been Best Picture nominees (which, as Nick pointed out, has happened to most categories since the Best Picture expansion).
All that said, I would love it if Aftersun were nominated here, since the Editing was a big part of why that story worked as well as it did (and I'm hoping if it makes it to Best Picture, which I'm hearing it could, it has a shot here as well), though I also don't see how they resist giving it to Top Gun: Maverick (which would be deserved, whatever else one might say about it, it's top-notch old-school action filmmaking).
The statistics, once disaggregated, are fairly interesting.
In 2015 the Motion Picture Film Editors Guild compiled a list of the 75 best edited films of all time. Three of their choices do not fall into the Oscar period of 71 years (1934-2015) of recognizing editing. Let’s look at the data.
The Guild named 13 Best Pictures winners to their compilation (13 of 72 = 18%). The Academy awarded its editing prize to 30 Best Picture winners (30 of 71 = 42%).
The two lists fall into disagreement early. The Guild chose Citizen Kane as the second best edited film of all time. The Oscar that year went to Sergeant York. The two lists agree less than two dozen times.
Several Guild choices were snubbed by AMPAS. One interesting note is in 1974 when two Guild selections, The Conversation and The Godfather Part II, each failed to receive an Oscar nomination over the winner The Towering Inferno and the nominees Blazing Saddles, Chinatown, Earthquake and The Longest Yard.
I think it’s clear that having the entire AMPAS membership vote on the Best Editing Oscar leads to a conclusion where the perceived quality of the film is often more valued that of the specific craft.
Finbar -- i agree that that's interesting but also any compilation lists have the benefit of hindsight. And as we see each year with the Guild Awards, they hew very closely to what Oscar voters like even though the membership only overlaps by a small percentage (since the guilds are much larger than the AMPAS branches)..
For example in the 1974 year the Editors Guild in their own awards voted THE LONGEST YARD, EARTHQUAKE, and THE TOWERING INFERNO as the three best edited dramas with The Longest Yard winning their prize. Notice that they also ignored the Coppola pictures in their own awards at the time!