Quantum of Cobblers

If this blog is to be truly reflective, then as well as looking at where films work, it also needs to look at where they don't...and why.

It struck me after watching what could have been a good film almost ruined by editing, that if this blog is to be truly reflective, then as well as looking at where films work, it also needs to look at where they don't...and why.

We watched Quantum of Solace on Saturday night. After 20 minutes we were all but ready to give up, so bad was the editing. It starts with one of Bond film's trademark intro chase sequences --now almost as much of a cliche as the TARDIS scene in Doctor Who ("It's bigger on the inside than the outside!")-- during which Bond captures an enemy agent and brings him in for interrogation, at which point things start to go wrong, both for Bond and the viewer. Someone fires a shot, someone else crumples, and then someone runs off. At this point, Bond runs after them -- which is a slight improvement on what's gone before, since we can at least identify one of the protagonists. In the scenes that follow, the villain runs across lots of rooftops, and then goes underground.

It wasn't that the editing was technically poor...it was actually very good at conveying what I assume the editor was trying to do, to (presumably) be thrilling, and to replicate being on a roller-coaster. The problem is that thrills and effects are at a premium, whereas clarity seems to be optional. The editor seems to have forgotten what the point of his/her job is -- to be part of an overall process. Instead the editor has elevated his/her part of the process to dominate everything else. When the producer actually got the editor back under some sort of control, the film became a much better one, at least until the final sequence, which was almost as incomprehensible as went before. It may be that I'm doing the editor a disservice, that the responsibility rests with the producer and/or director who encouraged such incomprehensibility. Certainly neither Richard Pearson, who edited Iron Man 2, nor Matt Chesse, whose work includes Finding Neverland and The Kite Runner are dunces -- both have been Oscar nominated. Perhaps the problem is that the film was also turned into a video game, and they became preoccupied with replicating that feeling, because the film is like watching one looooong game. Which is a shame.

It seems that the Bond franchise has been becalmed by the financial climate, but I think that if Quantum of Solace had been a better film, more intent on storytelling than on effects, maybe the take would have been better.

I very much got that feeling in the preview of our films; watching two of them, I had no idea what was happening and why, because the editing process seemed to have become an end in itself. Hopefully the final post-preview work will take care of that.