2013 Muriels: Best Editing

Surprised to see our second-place finisher up as high as it was. I don't know why - our voters always have such fine taste... :-)

Third place:



Alfonso Cuarton and Mark Sanger, Gravity [116 points / 18 votes]

Second place:



David Lowery and Shane Carruth, Upstream Color [117 points / 17 votes]

And your winner...



Thelma Schoonmaker, The Wolf of Wall Street [160 points / 24 votes]

""Every film is a puzzle really, from an editorial point of view." - Walter Murch

Thelma Schoonmaker has often compared her process of editing, primarily films with her frequent collaborator Martin Scorsese, to sculpture. Her best and most potent works with Scorsese (The King of Comedy, No Direction Home, Casino), remind us of the primary difference between an editor of the cinema and television, which is to say the lure towards noticing the edit or the invisibility of one. Like a sculptor, Schoonmaker's ability to shape reminds us that things are, after all, being shaped, exposing something less than smooth or polished.

The Wolf of Wall Street is one of Schoonmaker's finest collaborations with Scorsese, though her contributions can be easily overlooked or forgotten in this exasperating film. A moment in the first hour of the film, exemplifying the deftness of Schoonmaker's hand, occurs right before a raucous Long Island beachfront party: a man (never seen in the film or after) lifts his head from a pool of water, which is then interrupted with a few brief moments of green lightning bolts from Portrait of Jennie before cutting to a rather traditional shot of an overhead helicopter shot of said party; what this brief jolt of energy does is remind us how, in cinema, tangential and (at first blush) inconsequential moments build anticipation.

It's rumored that The Wolf of Wall Street was nearly four hours long just a few weeks before a final cut was due. Though this has been the primary draw of recent attention to Schoonmaker, the ability to shape and whittle the film, shaving nearly an hour while retaining the integrity of the film against market restraints, is just another one of her remarkable achievements on a very long list." -- Michael Lieberman

See the full results.