93rd Academy Awards: Doc, Doc, who's there? A deep dive into the feature nominees
Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 1:00PM by Josh Bierman
I’m sure I’m not the only contributor/reader on this site who upon Oscar nomination morning wakes to find they’ve already seen just about every above the line nominee. Or if they haven’t, they come to terms with having to sit through Hillbilly Elegy after managing to avoid it for months.
This season, like in so many past ones, it’s those below the line nominees that I spent time getting to know after the nomination announcement. I didn't expect to be so far behind on Best Documentary Feature ahead of nomination morning...
AppleTV+’s Boys State had been gaining momentum as a potential nominee as had Kirsten Johnson’s Netflix venture, Dick Johnson is Dead. However, the documentary branch threw us a curveball like they did in 2018 when buzzy documentaries like Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Three Identical Strangers, frontrunners all season long, were shafted. And much like 2018, we’re still left with a pretty strong line up. While AppleTV+ missed out, Netflix has two nominees in contention, Amazon Prime has one, and our two foreign language documentaries can be found on Hulu. Without further ado, let’s meet our nominees in the order I personally met them...
My Octopus Teacher explores filmmaker and marine life enthusiast Craig Foster’s relationship with an octopus he spent a year observing off the coast of Cape Town. Directors James Reed and Pippa Ehrlich interecut Foster’s narration with footage Foster himself shot underwater. While the underwater shots do a great job of showing what this experience must have been like, Foster’s narration goes a long way in helping you understand his aquatic reality. In the first few minutes, he describes how frigid the water was on his first few visits and his description was so vivid that I felt cold hearing about it. I won’t lie, I was hoping for a bigger octopus than the one we got, but then again this wasn’t my octopus teacher, it was someone else’s. And like Foster it was hard not to fall in love with this octopus and the relationship that Foster creates with her. The documentary is at its most interesting (and heartrending) when dealing with the hardest part of documenting nature--the helplessness of the human observer in the animal world’s most violent moments. In most nature documentaries we accept the reality that documentarians can’t insert themselves into the environment they are filming, but most don’t have the relationships that Foster built with the octopus. Both Foster and the audience are left reeling as we watch our octopus fend for her life against sharks. Ultimately, My Octopus Teacher hits all of its marks. Foster clearly sets up in the beginning a relationship he always dreamed of being able to have with animals, he creates that relationship, and then we see how it serves to bring him closer to the people already in his life, like his son who he begins to include in his underwater adventures. And it all happens in a snappy 85 minutes, the perfect feature length.
The first of the two foreign language documentaries I watched was Chile’s The Mole Agent. A private investigator is contacted by the daughter of a woman in a nursing home who believes her mother is being mistreated. The PI advertises in local listings for an elderly person to go undercover in the facility. Enter Sergio, a recently widowed man looking for a way to fill his days. What follows is a heartwarming portrait of a man finding a purpose later in life, but also a sobering look at aging. There are delightful moments of Sergio learning how to use technological devices like an octogenarian Maxwell Smart. We see him become the flavor of the month at the home with every woman making a move including a woman who has been there for 25 years. (Where’s that movie? That means she would have been in this facility starting in her mid 60s and she seemed completely with it, both mentally and physically, in her 80s!).
I don’t know if I’ve been in the house too long and watching the news too much, but I was convinced Sergio was Dr. Fauci’s long lost twin. Like his American counterpart, he takes his job so seriously and with a degree of empathy that is so rare. That level of thoughtfulness for other people should be necessary in every single job. Ultimately, while I loved watching Sergio’s journey and the friendships he makes, this didn’t feel like a documentary. It didn’t feel like a documentary about an elderly man going undercover to find abuse in a nursing home, it almost felt like they were documenting a social experiment. And yet, I was completely charmed by the movie and would be happy to see it win on Oscar night. It also doesn’t hurt that it was less than 90 minutes. If you haven’t watched I Care a Lot yet, the two films would make an interesting double feature. And for what it’s worth, The Mole Agent has what Dick Johnson is Dead wants.
The next documentary was Netflix’s Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution which explores the lives of a group of disabled kids who attended Camp Jened, a summer camp that let them be surrounded by people just like themselves. It ultimately empowered many of them to be leading forces in the disability rights movement when they grew up. All the documentaries in this category do a really wonderful job of getting us to fall in love with the figures they’re spotlighting. No documentary in this list has a better cast of characters. They are brimming with life, particularly Denise Sherer Jacobson who has a wicked sense of humor. My hang up with the film was based on what I was assuming it would be from the title. I was hoping to see more of their life at camp. I had an uncle who was a quadrapalegic and his greatest joy in life was going to summer camp every year from childhood through adulthood. He would paint and make friends and talk about it all year until the next summer came around. I wish we got to experience more of the camp life, because ultimately Camp Jened closed and we deserve the oral history leading to that moment. That being said, the latter half of the title leads to a rousing and empowering second half. This is a must watch for younger generations including my own. I was embarrassed I didn’t know how recent the fight for the civil rights of handicapped folks was in our history. Ultimately, I think this will be our winner come Oscar night. I hope there’s a way that all the Camp Jened alumni who made this film so special will be able to be included on Oscar night. I think a virtual ceremony will make that more likely than a regular Oscar night. I think back to Ali Stroker winning a Tony for Oklahoma! and having to wait backstage to then take the stage upon winning. While these amazing crusaders fought hard for an accessible world and succeeded, you don’t have to look further than an awards show as recent as 2019 to see that we still have a ways to go.
If anything can spoil Crip Camp’s win I think it’s Garrett Bradley’s Time. Bradley shows us Fox Rich’s two decade long battle to get her husband, Rob, out of prison following a conviction for armed robbery using both home video footage Fox herself shot over the course of years interspliced with Bradley’s own camerawork beginning in 2016. Fox is endlessly watchable. Eloquent and savvy, we watch her come into her voice over the course of twenty years. It is impossible not to root for her and for what she is fighting. The ingeniousness of bouncing back and forth between the present day and the past shows not just Fox’s growth, but how her children have forged a path while not having a father figure present in the way most children do. Following the protests of last June and the recent fight in New York State to vaccinate the incarcerated community, this film highlights the struggle black people have been facing for decades in and out of the prison system. Time is a movie for the moment we are living in. The last five minutes hit like a ton of bricks. It is an emotional release like none other. I well up even at the thought of it. In addition to the story itself, no documentary in this list tells its story as innovatively as Time. If a spoiler happens in this category it will be here. And it would be pretty neat to have two female POC directors winning in one night.
Rounding out the category is Collective. For the second time in history and the second year in a row, one of the nominees in this category is also a nominee in Best International Feature. The Romanian doc tells the story of a 2015 fire at a Bucharest nightclub that killed 27 and injured 180. In the months after the fire, 37 more people died due to the hospital's inability to treat burn victims as well as the discovery that hospitals had been using diluted disinfectants. As journalists continue to investigate the mismanagement of the healthcare system, it becomes clear how broken the system is and ultimately how hopeless reform will be. Like Time, Collective is a film that comments on the moment we are currently living through.For over a year now, we’ve all been focused on the flaws of healthcare systems the world over. It’s impressive how timely it is considering it was technically released in 2019. It does a great job of exploring the healthcare crisis while also showing us how one particular survivor coped with her new reality. I’m not sure this makes sense, but of all the documentaries this felt the most like a capital D documentary. It is Serious. It is the biggest downer and it felt like a spiral of things getting worse. There are images that made my stomach turn for myriad reasons. I didn’t find any hope in this film, not that it was their job or intention to give the viewer that feeling. Ultimately, I wonder if that will hurt it’s chances. Maybe next year we’ll have our third year in a row where we have a foreign language film in both International Feature and Documentary and it’ll emerge victorious in one category. But this year is not that year.
My predictions in order of most likely winner to least...
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Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution
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Time
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Collective
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My Octopus Teacher
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The Mole Agent
What say you, reader? Do you also think Crip Camp will emerge victorious? Or are you still bitter that Dick Johnson’s Oscar chances are dead?
OTHER CATEGORY REVIEWS
- Adapted Screenplay
- Cinematography
- Costume Design
- Makeup and Hair
- Original Song
- Sound
- Visual Effects
- Documentary Feature
- Shorts, Animated
- Shorts, Doc
- Shorts, Live Action
plus
- Um... who is winning best actress?
- Double acting nomination complications
- How often does Best Actor go to a non-Best Picture nominated film?
- New Oscar records
- History of Posthumous Oscars
- Oldest Best Actor Nominees of all time (two are from this year!)
Reader Comments (28)
I've seen two so far. Collective was great -- suspenseful, emotional, a call to action. Well-edited and shot, with amazing access to all sides of the debate. I'd vote for it easily.
Have also seen Time. I liked the structure and manner it was told in, but couldn't get over one major element (MILD SPOILER): Sibil didn't seem at all apologetic for committing armed robbery. I think there was one scene near the end at church where she called it a poor choice or something to that effect, but I just couldn't engender the required sympathy for the protagonist when there was such little regret for a major crime, despite the very real injustices of the system overall.
I'd rate them:
1. Collective A
2. Crip Camp A
3. My Octopus Teacher A-
4. The Mole Agent B+
5. Time B-
Basically, I'd be happy with anything but Time, which is a mess. I was left with too many questions at the end of The Mole Agent, primarily - Didn't he ever have any interactions with the male patients? We see them in the background at the birthday party, and at one point they say there were four in the home. That's not a lot, but still I would think he'd at least have some contact with them. But still I admired the film's combination of delightful and depressing.
Oh yeah, I think that Collective is the best film in both the Documentary and International Film categories, and that that will work against it. How many voters would be ready to vote for it in both, and if not, which category would they choose?
I LOVED Collective. The way it shifted from one bomshell news story to another to eventually the political sphere with no way forward. Brilliant storytelling.
Bravo Crip Camp! That twist mid film is the most startling surprise in cinema this year. I admire the artistry that created this film as well as the unforgettable men and women, particularly Judith Heumann, whose advocacy made significant and lasting change for so many.
I think Octopus is winning.
I think people love My Octopus Teacher and it is stronger than we think.
I've only seen three - loved Crip Camp so I hope it does win! Hated My Octopus Teacher in a way I didn't know it was possible to hate a documentary. Found Time unimpressive, especially considering the raves, but if it keeps My Octopus Teacher from winning I'll be all for it.
Re: Collective I didn’t find any hope in this film
I would argue the investigative journalism carried out by a sports journal of all papers was pretty impressive. Also although Minister-I-am-Vlad was pretty hapless at first but he does start to make some changes, before the election is lost. But at the end of 2020 there was another election, and guess what he is Minister of Health again.
I paused the same scene of My Octopus Teacher.
I think Collective should have been nominated for Picture, Director, Original Screenplay and Film Editing as well... it's that great.
Crip Camp was really interesting till it went the baity and cliched way (the stairs scene at the end cringed me in the worst way possible) and I wonder what the producers had to do with that... the Obama factor is kind of definitive... I have to confess that it would shock me if it doesn't - undeservingly - win.
Different reactions from different people to film will never fail to fascinate me. My Octopus Teacher was one of the most amazing, moving, intellectually stimulating things I've ever seen on film in any genre. Don't underestimate its chances.
Judy Heumann from Crip Camp was my movie hero of the year. Her last name is pronounced "human" so people called her "Ms. Human" when she testified in Congressional hearings. Her name alone forced people to recognize her humanity, yet it still took decades for the ADA to become law.
I loved Time and I think it's perfectly edited. Haven't seen Collective yet, but so far I wouldn't mind Time winning.
The Mole Agent is indeed a social experiment. I think director Maite Alberdi is less interested in delivering classic documentaries than in pushing and playing the form in order to create a story. There's a lot of improvisation but there are also what seem to be scripted scenes in it. We still classify it as a doc, but that's because of our need of categorization.
I feel like Octopus is winning it. It just won the PGA.
by the way, it's totally winning.
My thoughts: I don't care since the deserved winner (Welcome to Chechnya) wasn't nommed.
I'll take any of the 5, but prefer Collective or Crip Camp. So many amazing docs this year. If anything, THIS category should be expanded beyond 5 nominees before Best Picture should be expanded beyond 5.
I'm hoping to get to Collective and The Mole Agent this weekend, but I've seen the other three and all were lovely, moving, and introduced me to worlds I knew little to nothing about.
Crip Camp is essential viewing that should be required in schools. I felt embarrased watching it as I realized that it had never occurred to me that this incredible disability rights movement existed, let alone so recently and with such passion and courage. I felt rightfully indicted by how much I take for granted and how hard-won basic dignities are for so many people and how much is left to do to achieve any measure of equity. I loved all the personalities we met, but Denise Sherer Jacobson's joie de vivre was especially moving.
My Octopus Teacher was endlessly fascinating and touching. I'm a huge animal lover, but this is a creature I had limited awareness of. And what a remarkable being she is! Can you even believe we share a planet with someone so fascinating?! I loved seeing a film that showed not only a wild animal as an individual with her own life in a wild ecosystem at balance but also the ways in which connecting with that wildness enhances our own humanity. Gorgeous imagery, and I cried like a baby.
I watched Time today and Fox Rich is a woman I want to see more of. Wow. There aren't words to describe her strength, but it's her drive to help others and the love that radiates through her that had me wishing I could hug her. As much as it is a portrait of the damage inflicted on people and families by a broken and racist criminal justice system, this was an example of the power of family and commitment to get through the worst of situations with grit and grace. The mix of old and new footage, beautiful black-and-white shots, and the hauntingly elegant score worked just right. The ending was absolutley beautiful.
I'd be thrilled to applaud any of these three on Oscar night. Congrats to all the filmmakers! More, please!
i couldn't get past the fact that craig foster thought the octopus taught him empathy when having a child of his own might have taught him the same lesson sometime over the past ten years
plus his flat narration while describing what was happening right in front of us on screen was a chore to listen to
I've only seen Crip Camp and loved it, so was surprised so many didn't here in the many comment sections it has appeared in
Also I'm trying to avoid reading about My Octopus Teacher because of it's divisive (approximately 85% hate from readers) nature and I want to be surprised when he fucks the octopus, beacuse most documentaries end up merely meh or uninvolving, but this one illicits ire.
Please let "My Octopus Teacher" win. What a beautiful, touching film about love that crosses species. I can not speak.
I was sure that my Octopus teacher was about pedophiles teachers in schools
The ones I've seen (after watching "My Octopus Teacher" yesterday)
1. Collective ***** / A+
2. Crip Camp *** 1/2 / C+
3. My Octopus Teacher *** / C
"Time" I think I have it on one of the streaming services (Amazon? HBO? will check out later)
"The Mole Agent" I think it was released on theaters here but I think I missed it or never arrived to my town.
I'd love COLLECTIVE to win, but strangely I think it has a better shot in international feature. I think TIME would be a great winner, although I'd been expecting CRIP CAMP to be the Oscar favourite since I saw it in March (and said as much in my review) although OCTOPUS has come up big in terms of wins and buzz. The only one that doesn't have much of a hope is THE MOLE AGENT, but I like that it was nominated. Good for them.
So many people acting surprised that DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD wasn't nominated, like it's at all close to what this branch usually likes. As I've said plenty of times before, the branch is changing and you never really know where they'll gravitate, but I hadn't been predicting it and its loss wasn't much of a 'surprise' in the way that, say, WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOUR or JANE was.
I wanted to write my thoughts about Time, but seen that Paranoid Android wrote the exact same things I had in mind.
till now, I've seen Time and The Mole Agent, and my vote would've gone to the latter as it is sweet and charming and has a more important & unique message.
At the expense to see The Mole Agent, just saw Time today and My Octopus Teacher yesterday so...
1. Collective ***** / A+
2. Time **** 1/2 / B+
3. Crip Camp *** / C
4. My Octopus Teacher *** / C-
My Best Documentary nominees at this point...
Collective (winner)
David Byrne's American Utopia **
Dick Johnson is Dead
Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen
Time *
* I normally include miniseries and "Time"'s place is taken by The Yorkshire Ripper
** I think that the best film of them all is Spike Lee's David Byrne's American Utopia, however, I would give it to Collective for being more important and almost equally mesmerizing from a filmmaking style.
I've only seen Octopus Teacher and thought it was just lovely. My husbo saw Crip Camp and has been urging me to see it as well. Great feature, thanks - I need to catch up! I hope Josh B or someone will also do a piece on the short docs (seen all of them) as well as live action shorts (seen 3 of the 5 plus White Eye is debuting on Netfllix I think this weekend).