Mr Scissorhands

Considered among the best film editors in the UK and US,Anwar has been on the Academy Award shortlist before — he was nominated for the Best Film Editor Oscar for the 1999 film American Beauty. Mention the latest honour and he recalls the disappointment of not winning: “The Academy nomination brings back memories of horror. Award ceremonies are quite an ordeal as they stretch for over three hours and then,at the end,you just come out without winning anything. At the same time,you cannot help being drawn into it.”

He should be optimistic about his chances this time around. The King’s Speech has proved to be a giant killer at recent award ceremonies,sweeping prizes in major categories at the BAFTA. It has been nominated for 14 Oscars this year. “The challenge for me was to find the suitable piece of music to work with. It is easier to cut with music than without it,” says Anwar,who has often used Zakir Hussain’s tabla compositions and other Indian percussion instruments in his films apart from Pt Ravi Shankar’s music. In The King’s Speech,his signature comes through towards the end,when the montage sequence is juxtaposed with strains from Beethoven and Mozart.

It helped that director Tom Hooper and the rest of The King’s Speech production team were open to ideas. “The challenge of editing is not tackling the film,it is tackling the personalities involved,” says Anwar,a veteran who has 40 films to his credit that include The Good Shepherd (2004),Revolutionary Road (2008) and Law Abiding Citizen (2009). Anwar reduced the running time from the original three hours to 180 minutes. The film is about Prince Albert (Colin Firth),who is crowned King George VI,and how he works towards overcoming his stuttering and makes a radio speech to the nation before the beginning of World War II. “I sat with the director and removed the unnecessary elements. There was a lot to decide like what to discard and what part of a scene is repetitive. Through cutting and snipping accordingly,we managed to bring the film down to a length that is acceptable,” he explains.

As a university student in the UK,however,Anwar never really had any plans of joining the film industry. His father introduced him to people from the British film industry and left him to work his way up. “I applied for a job as a driver for a film company. I picked up artists and moved the bosses’ cars around,got them tea or coffee or whatever they wanted. Soon,I was a third assistant editor on various documentaries and I worked my way up gradually,” he says. But it was during his stint with the BBC in the early 1980s that he took up film editing seriously and made his first TV serial,Oppenheimer,which received the BAFTA Television Award for Best Editing the same year.

Since he left India,Anwar has not returned to the country. “A few months ago,I almost had a reason to visit. Pune-based director Kranti Kanade offered me work in his English-language film,Against Itself ,but I could not take it up due to other commitments,” says Anwar. When he does visit,will it be with the golden statuette? We will have to wait and watch.