Michael Ondaatje Books
Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian author and poet best known for his Booker Prize–winning novel The English Patient. His works often blend history, memory, and imagination, and he has also written extensively on art and film.
Known for: The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
Books by Michael Ondaatje
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film is not a conventional how-to guide, nor is it a simple interview book. Instead, it is an intimate, intellectually rich exchange between novelist Michael Ondaatje and legendary film editor and sound designer Walter Murch about how films are truly made in the editing room. Across their discussions, Murch reflects on the hidden craft that shapes cinema: when to cut, how sound alters meaning, why rhythm matters more than rules, and how instinct and structure work together to create emotional truth. Drawing on landmark films such as Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, and The English Patient, the book reveals editing as both technical labor and philosophical inquiry. It matters because it makes visible one of cinema’s most invisible arts, showing how stories are discovered rather than merely assembled. Ondaatje is an ideal guide for this exploration. As the author of The English Patient and a writer deeply interested in memory, time, and artistic process, he brings both curiosity and literary sensitivity to the conversation, helping Murch translate complex ideas into insights that filmmakers, writers, and attentive viewers can all use.
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Editing Began When Film Learned to Cut
Every art form changes the moment it discovers what it can leave out. Walter Murch begins by tracing editing back to cinema’s earliest days, when films were little more than unbroken views of reality: a train arriving, workers leaving a factory, a street scene unfolding. At first, the camera simply ...
From The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
A Good Cut Follows Emotional Truth
The most memorable edits are often the ones you never notice. Murch argues that the best cut is not the most clever, smooth, or technically impressive one, but the one that feels emotionally inevitable. He famously prioritizes emotion above all else: if a cut preserves what the audience should feel ...
From The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
Sound Changes What Images Mean
We often think we watch films, but Murch reminds us that we also hear them into meaning. As one of cinema’s great sound designers as well as editors, he is uniquely positioned to explain how sound can deepen, redirect, or even contradict what an image seems to say. A close-up of a face accompanied b...
From The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
Technology Serves Judgment, Not Art Alone
New tools promise speed, flexibility, and precision, but Murch insists that technology does not replace taste. He has worked across major shifts in filmmaking, from physical film and analog sound to digital systems, and his reflections are balanced rather than nostalgic. Better tools can remove fric...
From The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
Editors Balance Memory, Intuition, and Structure
Not every great editorial choice can be explained by formula. Murch describes editing as an activity where conscious analysis and unconscious recognition constantly interact. Editors rely on craft, structure, and accumulated experience, but they also depend on memory and intuition: subtle internal s...
From The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
Apocalypse Now Shows Editing as Discovery
Some films are assembled; others are found. In discussing Apocalypse Now, Murch reveals editing as a process of excavation under extreme conditions. The film’s production was famously chaotic, with vast amounts of footage, shifting intentions, and the challenge of shaping a coherent emotional and th...
From The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film
About Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian author and poet best known for his Booker Prize–winning novel The English Patient. His works often blend history, memory, and imagination, and he has also written extensively on art and film.
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Michael Ondaatje is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian author and poet best known for his Booker Prize–winning novel The English Patient. His works often blend history, memory, and imagination, and he has also written extensively on art and film.
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