Film editor Alan Baumgarten could embark on a second career as a juggler. Not that he has an interest in bowling pins or the circus, but the longtime cutting craftsman has made a specialty of, well, juggling many characters and non-linear plots into clean, coherent audience experiences. Baumgarten was nominated for an Oscar for 2013’s “American Hustle” and again this year as one of the six nominations (and perhaps the most no-brainer nod of them all) notched for Aaron Sorkin’s vast ensemble drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”
The film depicts an inflammatory political and cultural period in 1968 and 1969, and contains more than two dozen characters, from lawyers and defendants to judges and government officials.