Before I announce today's winner, I'd like to take this opportunity to give a shout-out to all of this year's voters, particularly those who were able to contribute written pieces for the cause. One of the great pleasures of working with the Muriels over the years has been interacting with many talented people who are knowledgeable and passionate about cinema. While I've lost some of my desire to write about movies (though not for the movies themselves), I'm sort of taken aback by how much I have left to learn about movies compared to some other folks out there. I offer my most sincere thanks to every one of you, and to everyone else who cares for the Muriels.
Third place:
The Grand Budapest Hotel [editor: Barney Pilling] (99 points / 18 votes)
Second place:
And the Muriel Award goes to...
Boyhood [editor: Sandra Adair] (192 points / 28 votes)
"At first blush, the editing of Boyhood looks and feels seamless, with a quiet, flowing pace spanning the now legendary twelve year time span of both the shoot and of the film’s timeline. But Sandra Adair, the editor for the entirety of Boyhood's production, has (as much as director Richard Linklater) shaped the film into what it has become like no other person in her field, in such a time span, outside of documentary cinema. The magnitude of that achievement cannot be overstated.
"Adair edited over a dozen projects during the time she pieced together Boyhood, many of which were Linklater’s. During a dozen years of making Boyhood, Adair and Linklater’s voices changed, adapting to new material and, without choice, new technology. Yet the consistent shaping of Boyhood, as miraculous as the circumstances concerning the film’s evolution are, is the true miracle of the film. There are no shock-cuts or fades-to-black when the film jumps a year into future and there is no technical demarkation either, given the film was shot on a similar 35mm film stock throughout, maintaining the a specific look. The slow-burn portraiture of the evolving characters and their faces could be the central and main focus, but there is no denying the beauty of those subtle jumps into the future.
"The editor is often seen as the film's butcher, paring down longer rough cuts to marketable lengths (Themla Schoonmaker’s miraculous work for The Wolf of Wall Street) or perfecting the precision of a vision (John Axelrad & Kalya Emter’s work for The Immigrant). Adair’s work for Boyhood seems to tread both of these lines, with the film’s intended length at always being under three hours and that it closely followed its screenplay. But even the description of what an editor does barely comes close to watching Adair’s work unfold, over the film’s 165 minutes. It’s the quiet grace of her work that allows the film’s impact to slowly build, not immediately pop, and sustain itself well after the movie ends." ~ Michael Lieberman
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