The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film (review)

imbue her with depth. A compelling figure, but Agnes is almost pathological in her secrecy. As a result, the memoir takes on the feeling of a detective novel, with Blake Morrison sleuthing out his mother's carefully concealed past. Morrison has an important weapon in this struggle: letters preserved by his father. These are lovely exchanges between Arthur and Agnes over the span of their courtship, most written while Arthur was doctoring in various theaters of World War II and Agnes was doctoring back home. These letters are the true gems of the book, lively and human. We come to understand Arthur, to cheer for him. And yet, despite being privy to thousands ofAgnes's words, often truly heartfelt and naked, we never quite grasp her in the same way. Perhaps Agnes's contradictions are what make her so hard to assess. Subordinate in marriage, she is nonetheless the more capable of the two family physicians. Shy and withdrawn, she intrigues a wartime poet enough that he dedicates one of his collections to her. Even her name suggests obliqueness. She takes on a number of different names, finally settling on Kim at the request of her husband. This passivity extends throughout her life, to the detriment of the memoir, for while the idea of a wife who accepts a new name out of love for her husband is intriguing, the question of why a husband would want to rechristen a wife is more so. Arthur is so charismatic that in Morrison's book he often upstages his wife. This is not necessarily a problem for the reader, who has no vested interest in either character, but Morrison forces the issue, driving his father into the background and teasing his mother forward through commentary and intrusive narration. Author and reader alike are frustrated as, again and again, Agnes (or Gennie, or Kim)'s ethereal essence evades her son's attempts to capture it. He never manages to pin her down, and the memoir suffers as a result. As Morrison points out, this story has certain inherent hindrances: it is the tale of a courtship, without the suspense of wondering how it will end. And the letters between Arthur and Agnes, whose energy fuels the memoir, end once the lovers are united. Once they share a bed, they no longer direct their emotions to paper. There is a satisfying conclusion to Father: Arthur Morrison dies suddenly and mysteriously. Agnes Morrison, on the other hand, succumbs to old age, a degeneration that mirrors the finale of this book. Hers is the quiet end that we all hope to have in life but that does not fit literary protagonists nearly so well. (MP) The Conversations: WalterMurch and the Art ofEditing Film by Michael Ondaatje Alfred A. Knopf, 2002, 368 pp., $35 To read Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations: Walter Murch and the An of Editing Film is to eavesdrop on two artists of almost boundless powers discussing their respective creative passions. The Conversations is a series of five entertaining and iUuminating dialogues between Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, and Walter Murch, film editor of the movie. In The Missouri Review · 183 this fascinating peek into a cinematic craft, Ondaatje reveals the genie behind the Hollywood curtain. Inasmuch as movies create a collective cultural memory, Murch's art has imprinted the American psyche: he has had a hand in such iconic films as The Godfather, American Graffiti , The Conversation, The Godfather, Part II, Apocalypse Now, Ghost and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Murch was the artist who flipped the switches, layered the sound and moved the images to make moviegoers believe that walls really do bend to the contours of ghosts and that there really are men walking among us who love the smell of napalm in the morning. With the utmost sensitivity, he must weave the raw elements of film the footage, the sound, the dialogue, the music into a coherent whole. In his own words: "It's really a question of orchestration: organizing the images and sounds in a way that is interesting, and digestible by the audience. One of your obligations as an editor is to drench yourself in the sensibility of...