Awards Circuit Column: Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's Elizabeth Holmes doc has a real shot at becoming the first nonfiction best picture nominee. Its biggest obstacle might be the Academy's own documentary branch. Will the Academy’s documentary branch finally see it all?
It just played the New York Film Festival and carries something no nonfiction film has pulled off in 98 ceremonies: a legitimate shot at best picture. It’s a gate that nonfiction films have been trying to storm past for years. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s 2021 film “Flee” came closest, landing documentary, animated and international feature nods at the 94th ceremony (a first, though the film went home empty-handed).
Why might the Holmes yarn break through? It’s a movie the rest of the Academy can find without an individual branch hanging a neon sign. Cinematographer David Bolen shoots with long lenses, parking on faces well past the point of comfort, which is what made the first “You Can See Everything” trailer viral.
Actors who have never opened a doc screener in their lives know Fielder from “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal.” Oppenheim has his own heat with “Primetime,” the Robert Pattinson drama also sitting in the awards mix. The best picture category is decided by the full membership of roughly 11,000 voters. However, the doc branch alone hands out the five documentary feature slots, and its habits have driven campaigners up the wall for decades.
You can make the most formally ambitious documentary of the decade, but if people have already decided they love another filmmaker, or they’ve seen them at enough dinners and screenings, you don’t stand a chance.” History has shown, however, that popularity rarely does a doc any favors. The “Hoop Dreams” omission in 1994 forced the Academy to overhaul the branch’s voting mechanism. Morgan Neville’s Mister Rogers portrait “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” grossed more than $22 million in 2018, won the PGA and Critics Choice doc prizes but didn’t score an Oscar nom.
Neville, who won for “20 Feet From Stardom” (2013), hasn’t been nominated since, which keeps a theory on the circuit alive: Win once and the branch considers you taken care of. Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour” and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”) is the rare exception. Did they make a great documentary?
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