Why Conclave Will Win Best Picture
Less than a week until the Oscars, and no less than 10 films are ramping up their campaigns in a last-minute push for the top prize of them all, Best Picture. This also appears to be a far more competitive race than in years past, which has often spat out at best two-horse races (like The Power of the Dog vs. CODA in 2022, or 1917 vs. Parasite in 2020), but more often a runaway coronation (as we've had in the last two years, with Oppenheimer and Everything Everywhere All At Once).
No, this one genuinely feels wide open in large part because of how many new names are up for the big awards. For the first time in history, the 5 Best Director nominees at these Oscars are all first-time nominees. Only 1 out of the 10 combined Best Actor and Best Actress nominees has ever won an Oscar, and only 4 of them have even been nominated before. But it's not just the absence of bona fide star power helming the nominated movies; it's the fact that there isn't a traditional frontrunner, as a small handful of films have split honors across the awards circuit thus far.
Those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can truly be counted out of the race. Spotlight's and Moonlight's back-to-back upsets in 2016 and 2017, Parasite's stunner in 2020, and CODA's late surge in 2022 all taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 10 nominees reason to believe on Sunday the 2nd.
Edward Berger's Conclave is adapted from a fairly unknown 2016 novel about an election for a new pope (referred to as a "conclave"). As the 200+ men quarantine themselves in the Vatican for the voting process, the main character, a Cardinal, organizes the vote and discovers scandals and shortcomings amongst the various candidates along the way. I know what you're thinking, and I think it too: this doesn't exactly give off "Oscar bait" nor "THE movie event of the year" vibes. And yet? Conclave is tied for the 3rd-most nominated film on Sunday night, with 8, including Best Picture, Actor, and Screenplay. Since its release, the Drama has also had Film Twitter in a chokehold in a very hilarious way.
The unexpected online obsession with Conclave in many ways harkens back to the appeal of last-year's winner Oppenheimer. The success of that big-budget epic by a beloved director was of course less surprising than a small-budget release from a lesser-known director about papal politics, but I remember being startled by how widespread and diverse the reigning Best Picture's fandom was, in a similar way to this one. My prevailing (only?) theory is that there's clearly just a market for films about men, mostly older men, gossiping and polticking in hushed conversations in dark and smoky rooms. I actually mentioned to more than one person after watching Conclave that that very dynamic, the crux of the film, gave me flashbacks to Oppenheimer-- at the very least the black-and-white "Fusion" timeline --which certainly could mean the film taps into a winning recipe.
Lest you think this appeal is isolated to myself and some online freaks, there's clearly a market on the awards circuit, too; despite somewhat mixed reviews from critics, and a very small box office performance, Conclave has been on a constant on the circuit. Not only that, it arguably enters Oscars Sunday as the Best Picture nominee with the most momentum. Though it didn't win any of them, it landed nominations in the Best Picture equivalent field at the Golden Globes, Directors' Guild, Producers' Guild and Critics Choice, and its 'dark-horse' hopes were pinned on it just constantly being in the conversation. Then, almost out of nowhere, in consecutive weeks (the last two Sundays, in fact) it won the main prize at the BAFTAs, and then SAG Awards, which has caused prognosticators everywhere to suddenly wonder: might Conclave actually win the damn thing?
Many people have referenced this already, but it's uncanny how much the plot of Conclave could mirror its run in the Oscar race. I'll be as vague as possible, in order to not spoil any major plot developments for those of you yet to see it, but most of the film involves various established papal candidates falling off one by one, as shortcomings or scandals are revealed, ending in a choice that, simply, has the least detractors. As sneering attitudes about major studio bucks and biopics hamper Wicked and A Complete Unknown, overwhelming backlash seems to have sunk the hopes of Emilia Pérez, and controversy over the lack of intimacy coordinators in Anora and the use of A.I. in The Brutalist beleaguer those longstanding favorites, Conclave stands poised to ascend to the top.
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