Justine
Wright: Editing with Reality and Cutting
with Style
by Peter Morris
On the crest of
releasing her fifth collaboration with director Kevin Macdonald, editor Justine
Wright has become one of a rare breed of modern day editors, she edits documentaries
and fiction films, and she edits them conversely tackling the documentaries
like fiction films and the fiction films like real life. This unique ability shows the true range of capacity
and experience needed by an editor who works across both fields of her
discipline. Being the creative force of
the post-production aspect of her films, Wright brings her own unique style to
the films she edits, be they for Kevin Macdonald or whomever else she is
cutting for, however out of the nine feature films she has edited, five have
been with Macdonald, the fifth of which Eagle
of the Ninth will be released early this year1. The truth being that their understanding and
insight combines to the success of their work; the four films released together
earning a number of Oscar nominations, and winning two.
Wright utilises
both the aspects of realist and formalist styles to her cutting, threading a
fine line between the two across her career.
The first feature she edited was Kevin Macdonald’s One Day In September (1999) which
recounted the horrific events of the 1972 Olympics in Munich, West Germany at
which a group of Palestinian terrorists took eleven Israeli hostages,
eventually leading to the massacre of both groups in the bloody finale at the
Munich Airport. The film cuts between
stock footage from the numerous cameras present at the games, along with key
interviews with some of the victim’s relations, police and even one of the
surviving terrorists. Added to these
documents of the event is a re-enactment of the scenes inside the hotel where
the Israelis were being held hostage.
These re-enactments serve as the backbone for getting inside the tragic
event and putting faces on the victims and the perpetrators, an important if
somewhat formalist approach to the documentary, first utilised in the form of
Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line in
1988. These elements combine and with
the hand of Wright, come together in a unique and absorbing way. The opening shot of the documentary, in some
people’s eyes the most important cut of all, is an advert from German
television in which happy people celebrate the coming of the Olympics to the
city of Munich. This opening shot cuts
to black, and a voice is heard saying, “Well,
nobody could foresee what later on happened.” And as the opening credits
role, voices from archive interviews is heard telling of the brutality and
shock of the incident. Wright sets the
documentary up from the start and throughout the viewer is engrossed by, not
just the story, but the visual medium by which it is told. The film jumps quickly from interview to
archive to re-enactment to rostrum to interview again, sometimes employing a
split-screen technique in keeping with the timeframe of the events that
happened. This highly stylised structure
to the film further augments the role of Wright as a master of her craft. Despite the horrific nature of the events the
viewer is witnessing, the speed and volume of information thrown at them allows
the film to become so much more accessible to audiences who would not usually
watch documentaries, the formalist style of the editing combining with the arduous
subject matter. The film was not without
criticism, with Wright and Macdonald’s decision to show a montage of action
shots of the dead bodies of the Israelis and Palestinians after the bloody
shootout against the sound of Deep Purple’s Child
In Time was described by Roger Ebert as a “tasteless conclusion2” to the film. Regardless of this criticism, One Day In September went on to win Best
Documentary at the 2000 Oscar ceremony.
In 2003
Macdonald and Wright’s next film together was released, a documentary
re-telling the events that led to an inspiring fight for survival for two
climbers in the Peruvian Andes. Touching The Void again proved that
Wright had a great aptitude at cutting documentaries in a very formalist style,
with the majority of the film being composed of a re-enactment cut between
interviews with the two survivors. This
is the truly remarkable thing about the editing done by Justin Wright in this
film; the viewer knows the two men survive but as the climax approaches she
builds the tension to breaking point, where the stress levels the viewer feels
is mirrored by the overwhelming emotional anxiety of the images on the screen. The tension mounts and mounts even though the
viewer knows the two men are alive and well nearly twenty years after the event
has taken place. The pacing of the film
is also worth note. As the film draws
ever closer to the inevitable catastrophe that cripples the climbers, the cuts
become shorter, and lines of voice-over from the interviews are sharp and
direct, and at one point when one of the climbers is cut loose and falls into a
crevasse, he literally disappears from the screen; there are no images of him
from the re-enactments or from the interviews and his sharp and direct lines of
voice-over are bleakly absent, and then as he re-appears and tells his
individual story of survival, the images of the other climber vanish and his
voice goes silent. The pacing slows down
as the horrible plight of the men becomes a struggle of endurance rather than
adventure.
It has been
described as a “pseudo-documentary3”
due to the use of these re-enactments and thus is seen as a stylised
documentary, taking its cues from the real world but presenting them as a
fictional film would. Wright skilfully
utilises this docu-drama style to allow the film’s tension and heartbreak to
manifest itself fully. With this shift
from traditional documentary cutting, which was already evident from One Day In September and furthered by Touching The Void, it was not surprising
that Wright and Macdonald were going to move away from the documentary and into
the world of fiction.
They worked
together three years later on The Last
King Of Scotland (2006), a dramatic retelling of the relationship between a
Scottish medical graduate and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and again in 2009 on State Of Play, Wright and Macdonald’s
first foray into the Hollywood machine. State Of Play tells the story of a
traditional journalist who tries to help solve a riddle regarding the death of
his best friend’s aid. It’s a taut
complex thriller which is based on the gritty BBC drama of the same name;
however this time set in America.
Macdonald approached the film from his British and European background
and along with Wright they created a resolute and definite style to the
film. Through Macdonald’s direction and
the work of Wright in post, State Of Play
stands out as a Hollywood film born of the reality of Britain, with long
cuts and little music, a slow and honest pace, allowing the film to breathe,
unlike so many Hollywood films before it and after. Here, Wright cuts the fictional film as
though it was reality and the stylised approaches she took to One Day In September and Touching The Void are left out and to
great effect. Rather than seeing this
film as a plot based thriller, she saw it as a human based story of betrayal
and honesty, against the backdrop of changes in our society. These were elements of the story that needed
to be exposed but not forced, and if Wright was to start cutting the film like,
say, One Day In September, with
split-screens and speed, then these definitive elements would be lost. The gritty realism of the film is its most
crucial asset and without the knowledgeable Wright this would have been an
impossibility.
It is obvious
that Macdonald and Wright have a close relationship, with Wright and composer
Alex Heff being his only two regular crew members4, working on his
five major features. Their common
knowledge of the differences in style transcends the entire outlook of their
finished films. Without Macdonald,
Wright could not choose, and without Wright, Macdonald could not complete.
Justine Wright
is an important editor in our time, as she can tackle both drama and
documentary in unexpected manners, resulting in some of the most prominent
films of the last ten years. Using style
for reality and reality for style Justine Wright’s abilities as an editor are
worthy of further examination, allowing us an insight into the variations and
choices we have as editors, not just in what we are cutting but in what we can
do with the cuts that have been given to us.
Bibliography:
- Internet
Movie Database (Online) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0942549/
- Ebert,
R (2001) One Day In September (Online)
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010309/REVIEWS/103090303/1023
- Urban,
A.(1997-2010) Touching The Void
Reviews (Online) http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=9004&s=Video_files
- Blair,
I. (2006) Kevin Macdonald: The Last
King of Scotland; Shooting some of the film on 16mm saved enough for a
"proper" DI (Online) http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0HNN/is_11_21/ai_n27098590/
References:
·
Landmann, D (2004) Touching the Void (Online) http://www.moviefreak.com/dvd/t/touchingthevoid.htm
·
Young, N (2000) The Filth and the Fury and One Day In
September (Online) http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/film/filth.html
·
Haneke, T Distilling the Documentary
Filmography:
·
Eagle
of the Ninth (2010) Dir. Kevin Macdonald
·
One
Day in September (1999) Dir. Kevin Macdonald
·
The
Thin Blue Line (1988) Dir. Errol Morris
·
Touching
the Void (2003) Dir. Kevin Macdonald
·
Last
King of Scotland (2006) Dir. Kevin Macdonald
·
State
of Play (2009) Dir. Kevin Macdonald
Abdulrehman Mulakhail
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