The fever around “You Can See Everything” is so high, some not only think it can be the first documentary to get a Best Picture nomination, but that it can even win Best Picture too. Maybe that mania will break if its box office starts to slow down and perform below estimates going forward, but for the moment, a Best Picture win isn’t being treated like a complete and total fantasy. Since there is absolutely no precedent for a documentary to win Best Picture, there is no precedent for what a win package for one would look like. However, there are a few Best Picture winners in this era who have packages that “You Can See Everything” can hope to echo in a potential win campaign, if not completely match.
Best Picture + Best Director + Best Editing + Best Documentary Feature = The “Parasite” Package
There are only a select few major categories that “You Can See Everything” can even be eligible for, let alone win, so it would have to win most if not all of them. Leaving aside the acting category it is eligible for, there are four significant categories it would have to sweep for its best possible historic Best Picture win, in a similar way that another historic winner did seven years ago.
Back in 2019, “Parasite” was the movie working against 90+ years of Academy history, since no non-English film had ever won Best Picture. Like “You Can See Everything,” it premiered with the highest of marks at a film festival – Cannes instead of Telluride – had the highest review scores of its year, if not of its decade, and seemed like a pipe dream at first to win anything except its specialty film category. But as the season went on and it racked up critics’ awards, it eventually overcame the odds and some significant early losses during industry voting season.
“Parasite” set the standard for an unprecedented film to win Best Picture, Best Director, an important category beyond the top six major Oscars, and a specialty film category. In the case of “You Can See Everything,” since it can’t compete in either Screenplay category, Best Editing will have to serve as the equivalent of “Parasite’s” Best Original Screenplay victory. What’s more, it has to impress the fickle Best Documentary Feature voting branch with its own set of rules and strict restrictions, like “Parasite” did with the Best International Feature voters.
If “You Can See Everything” can do that and win Best Editing, it will be up to Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim to stun the world with Best Director wins that signal Best Picture history is about to be made, like Bong Joon Ho did when he was announced as Best Director. Should that happen, “You Can See Everything” may indeed be the next “Parasite,” beyond just having some of the best reviews of the decade.
Best Picture + Best Director + Best Editing = The “Argo” Package
If “You Can See Everything” doesn’t even get a Best Documentary nomination or win, that wouldn’t be out of character for the documentary voting branch. It also wouldn’t automatically mean it would miss an overall Best Picture nomination. But even if that happens, winning Best Picture would become much harder without a Best Documentary Feature win to fall back on. However, another Hollywood movie that blurred the line between filmmaking and secret missions might have set such an example.
“Argo” famously steamrolled to win Best Picture after Ben Affleck was surprisingly snubbed for a Best Director nomination. It did so with a rather slim win package, the likes of which hadn’t become commonplace yet in the expanded era. But with only Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing wins, “Argo” became the first Best Picture winner without a Best Director nominee in 23 years – a bit of mild history-breaking on its part.
To pull off a much bigger feat, “You Can See Everything” would, ironically, have to have a Best Director win in place of a Best Adapted Screenplay win, and match “Argo’s” Best Editing victory. Would that kind of win package be enough for “You Can See Everything,” in a Best Picture race that may have more formidable frontrunners to overcome than “Argo” did? If that is the only way “You Can See Everything” can pull it off, it can at least look to the example of “Argo” – another film where a real-life movie shoot in the middle of real-life drama was not what it seemed.
Best Picture + Best Director Or Best Picture + Best Editing = The “Spotlight” Package
In the scenario where “You Can See Everything” doesn’t win or even get nominated for Best Documentary Feature, and can’t win two other categories besides Best Picture, history says that is when nominees are doomed to lose – all except one recent example.
“Spotlight” didn’t quite make the history “You Can See Everything” could, but it did break several decades of precedent by being the first Best Picture winner in 63 years to win only one other category. As such, if a documentary is going to win Best Picture for the first time, maybe breaking that kind of pattern is only too fitting.
There is a slight precedent for “You Can See Everything” to win with Best Picture and Best Director only, since “You Can’t Take It With You” last did so in 1938. Technically, that would only be a little more unparalleled than “Spotlight” matching a win package that hadn’t been done since 1952. Though given how a Best Editing win has been a necessity for several Best Pictures in recent years, a film winning without that would be extra noteworthy in this era under any circumstances. Still, a film taking Best Picture with just a Best Editing win has never been done before at all.
When “Spotlight” won with such a minimal package, it was the highest rated movie of 2015, won the most pre-Oscar awards, and had to hold off a film from the defending Best Director and Best Picture champion that got him Best Director again and won an acting Oscar. What’s more, it also had to hold off a desert-set IP sequel from Warner Bros. with a Best Director nomination, as well as a Best Adapted Screenplay winner with an ensemble cast and a highly stylized take on historic events. Even if “The Odyssey” is the new “The Revenant,” if “Dune: Part Three” is the new “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and if “La Bola Negra” is the new “The Big Short,” would any of that still point to “You Can See Everything” being the new “Spotlight?” Despite its failures to win other Oscars and make things easier on itself, everything else had to break perfectly for “Spotlight” to win anyway. But perhaps “You Can See Everything” doesn’t even have that little bit of wiggle room to be a winner like that, or like any other.
Do you think “You Can See Everything” has a chance to win Best Picture? What other awards do you think it could win? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, and check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
