Claire Simpson’s editing of The Constant Gardener is a kind of rhapsodic visual dance, and obviously fully deserving of an Oscar nom. It’s hard to define the difference between oppressively heebie-jeebie, ants-in-your-pants film editing..the kind that makes you grit your teeth and makes you feel like you’re swatting invisible flies (like the cutting of the action sequences in Paul Greengraass’s The Bourne Supremacy), and what Simpson and director Fernando Meirelles achieve in Gardener. But one sings and the other doesn’t, and, according to this piece by the Hollywood Reporter‘s Sheigh Crabtree, admiration for Simpson’s editing has been voiced repeatedly by her peers.
