So, is this You can see everything win an Oscar or something?
As someone who makes it a point to see every film that might be nominated for an Oscar, I sometimes feel like the best approach to predicting awards might be to go in the opposite direction: not see any of the films and make your guesses based solely on the previous one. Last year, Michael B. Jordan was more or less considered a contender for Best Actor until he won the Screen Actors Guild award two weeks before the Oscars. Timothée Chalamet had spent months leading an aggressive and innovative campaign for his pyrotechnic trick Marty SupremeLeonardo DiCaprio has done the best work of his career One battle after anotherand Ethan Hawke achieved a theatrical tour de force in Blue Moon. But put all that aside, plus subjective judgments about who gave the best or most difficult performance, and “actor plays multiple roles in the same film” emerges as the clear favorite. The least informed guess often turns out to be the best.
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s playful and confusing three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes has become a phenomenon like few things I’ve ever witnessed. After less than two weeks in theaters, it’s already one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time, and while it expanded to thousands of theaters nationwide in its second weekend, it came in second only to a major studio comic book film. Evening screenings always sell out in major cities, and even at a weekday matinee, I was in the company of more than a dozen other people who responded viscerally and vocally throughout the film. It remains to be seen how this will play out outside the United States, but at least in some American circles it’s the only thing being talked about.
Now for the bad news. No documentary has ever been nominated for Best Picture, nor Best Director, despite the fact that documentary filmmakers often produce some of the most innovative and expressive work in the field. The academy has repeatedly recognized that documentaries have editors, cinematographers, composers and sound technicians – and, more recently, that a non-fiction film could be the best film to come out of a particular country in a given year. (In 2022, Flee even became the first film to be nominated for Best Documentary, Best International Film, And Best Animated Feature.) But historically speaking, Oscar voters have been extremely reluctant to acknowledge the simple fact that documentaries are films and should, at least in theory, be considered in many of the same categories in which fictional features are eligible.
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s playful and confusing three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes has become a phenomenon like few things I’ve ever witnessed.
Of course, documentaries, unlike feature-length fiction films, have their own Oscar category. (Although international features and animated features do too, and at least a handful of them still earned a Best Picture nomination.) But even in this category, the academy has a long history of ignoring some of the medium’s greatest filmmakers: Frederick Wiseman never got a single nomination, DA Pennebaker was only nominated once, and the Maysles brothers were only nominated for Best Documentary Short in 1974. (Wiseman and Pennebaker at least received honorary Academy Awards before he died.)
The number of nominees has improved by leaps and bounds since the process was handed over to a dedicated documentary arm in 2001: it’s virtually inconceivable that films like the lyrical Hale County this morning, tonightthe essayist Soundtrack of a coup d’étator the semi-metafictional The act of killing would have been in the bottom five under the old system. But the academy as a whole has refrained from celebrating films that push the boundaries of the form. (As with most awards, nominations are the purview of a specialist branch, but final voting is open to all academy members, although they must now certify that they have seen all the nominees in a category before voting.) And while Oscar voters in general like to reward runaway successes, the documentary branch has proven, if not necessarily hostile, at least indifferent to popular success, eschewing Fahrenheit 9/11– still the highest-grossing documentary ever made – in 2005, and more recently ignoring the highly praised Mr. Rogers documentary. Don’t you want to be my neighbor?
Then there is the question of changing the composition of the academy. While much attention has been paid to the Oscars’ efforts to diversify its membership in terms of race and gender, there has been less focus on the fact that nearly a quarter of Oscar voters now live outside the United States, a transformation that was particularly significant in 2020, when Parasite becoming the first non-English language film to win Best Picture. The internationalization of the Oscars is an ongoing reality and one that, despite all the hype generated by American Oscar experts, You can see everything‘s chances, few have explicitly taken into account. In the US at least, the initial fervor around the film had much more to do with the film’s subject matter than its directors – we’re all Nathan Fielder – at the helm now, but until a few weeks ago he was still a cult figure – and while it’s a difficult thing to quantify, I don’t get the impression that Elizabeth Holmes is as much of a long-standing figure of fascination outside the US. American reaction to the film has reached such deafening volume that it can be heard around the world. pond, but until it starts showing in other countries (like the UK, where it’s not scheduled to open until November 20), I wonder how it will play with audiences who haven’t already spent years trying to figure out what Holmes’ deal is.
One thing I can be sure of You can see everything is that it plays incredibly well with even a small audience. I sat in sold out houses for Christopher Nolan’s film three times. Odysseywith viewers who had made the effort to see it in its preferred premium format and only heard one sound, but people roar when Billy Evans takes a bowl of eggs away from Elizabeth Holmes, and they explode when a certain actress appears to tell him why. (Speaking of which, if this actress manages to land a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, which also seems possible — A24 is pushing her into the category, where she has been confirmed as eligible — that would also be unprecedented, even by Maria Bakalova’s nomination for her always-in-character performance in Later Borat film.) As implausible as it may seem for a three-hour documentary, let alone one that almost no one knew existed two months ago, it is a true popular success, one that reconnects audiences with the pleasure of seeing a film surrounded by other people.
For that alone, it seems likely to sneak into the top 10 nominees for Best Picture – more likely even than making the Best Documentary shortlist. There’s actually a scenario where being left off the documentary’s shortlist actually increases its chances for Best Picture, prompting voters across the academy, all of whom can vote for Best Picture, to rally behind the dark horse. A win in either category still seems like an extremely distant project: It’s too weird for Best Picture, and voters who missed the last few decades of nonfiction filmmaking are already complaining that it’s “not really a documentary.” (Take note of pioneering filmmaker John Grierson, who coined the term documentary a century ago, defining it as “the creative processing of reality”, a definition You can see everything fits perfectly.) But considering how unlikely it was a year ago that we’d ever see Nathan Fielder at the Oscars, you have to admit that anything is possible. possible.
Read more in Slate at You can see everything.
