“Election season is not for the weak.”
Even this statement in the Telluride Film Festival program last fall couldn’t have guessed how directly German director Edward Berger’s stunning papal thriller “Conclave” would tackle our then-ongoing election season.
The start of Berger’s eight-Oscar-nominee sees the sudden death of its fictional pope, with Ralph Fiennes’ Cardinal Lawrence leading the democratic proceedings to appoint a replacement. Five months ago, in a different America with President Biden in the White House, Telluride attendees leaned into the film’s world of Vatican scandals, as open-minded papal contenders opposed bigotry, and even feminism and a refreshingly liberal celebration of non-binary gender identity entered the film’s male-dominant orbit as if to purposely address our country’s debates.
In his Variety review, Peter Debruge aptly underscored the film’s timeliness: “Berger may be German, but he almost certainly considered what ‘Conclave’ has to say about American politics in this moment,” Debruge wrote. “Here, the cardinals are surrounded by division, and they can reach for unity or respond with hate. Despondent as Fiennes’ character can be at times, the unexpected way things play out feels almost perfect, like an answered prayer.” The Robert Harris novel Peter Straughan’s screenplay is based on was published in 2016, just as Donald Trump was ramping up his first run at the White House. And in the real world of 2024, progressive Americans’ prayers didn’t get answered in the same perfect way that Debruge’s review observes. But with that, the already vital themes of the 10 best picture nominees including “Conclave” — conceived at a different time of a kinder-looking future for all — ended up holding up even more urgent mirrors to our present-day reality.
“Conclave” isn’t the only nominee from a non-U.S. director with insights into America’s polar-opposite values during the Trump era, the sequel. Take French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s surprise nominee “The Substance.” Broadly, Fargeat’s groundbreaking body horror (starring fearless best actress nominee Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley) is about the diminishing worth of aging women in Hollywood. But it’s also deeply about the universal devaluation of our sex in the hands of patriarchal systems. Look no further than Dennis Quaid’s industry mogul Harvey — that name can’t be a coincidence — who grotesquely drools over Qualley’s alluring youth, reminding us of the kind of men who probably have their own “Access Hollywood” tape somewhere. Premiering last May in Cannes, “The Substance” was a chilling reminder of how far society still needed to advance in its treatment of women. Reconsidered today, the horror feels all the more gut-spilling.
Another surprise best picture nominee is Brazil’s decades-spanning and awe-inspiring epic “I’m Still Here,” which follows a family tragedy through the country’s dictatorship starting with the 1970s. Centered on the matriarch Eunice Paiva (best actress nominee Fernanda Torres), the film both puts the brutal facts of a totalitarian regime on merciless display, and aims to preserve a nation’s historical memory for generations to come, as a piece of evidential artifact on how horrifying things used to be. As the film’s director Walter Salles said to Variety after the film’s Venice festival premiere: “We started this project thinking that we were retelling a story from the past, but we came to realize that it was also a reflection on our present.”
Its awards prospects might be derailed with star Karla Sofía Gascón’s recently surfaced bigoted tweets, but French director Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Pérez” still made history with Gascón being the first openly trans best actress nominee. In fairness, there have always been wide and valid objections to the 13-time-Oscar-nominee from both the Hispanic and trans communities, who called Audiard’s representation of Mexico and the trans experience problematic. But the inventive operatic musical with a powerhouse Zoe Saldaña performance still struck a chord with audiences with its inclusive qualities. Those may no longer be the film’s legacy, but a mainstream Oscar nominee’s prominent embrace of the trans identity feels important in a broad sense, especially in the wake of Trump’s executive order declaring that there are just two sexes, male and female, rejecting that people can transition from one gender to another or nonbinary.
Elsewhere, Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve’s five-time-Oscar-nominee “Dune: Part Two” emphasizes the dangers of putting faith in power-hungry strongmen who manipulate societal systems and vulnerable peoples into destruction, a message that feels frighteningly relevant.
It may be a bouncily candy-colored musical, but Jon M. Chu’s “very, very popular” 10-time-Oscar-nominee “Wicked” is now one of the most urgent narratives we have in the second Trump era, with (as specified in Debruge’s review), “a timeless critique of division, fascism and fear of the other that’s especially poignant in the wake of the presidential election.” In Chu’s own words, the film features “a charismatic leader who gaslights a community that this woman is wicked just because she’s standing up for a marginalized group of people in the society.”
Marginalized communities are also at the heart of RaMell Ross’s visionary “Nickel Boys” with two Oscar nominations, and Sean Baker’s 6-time-Oscar-nominee “Anora,” which flips the script on a traditional Cinderella story.
In the former, seen entirely through the first-person eyes of its main characters in a way that redefines cinematic language and confronts a period in U.S. history with an uncompromisingly Black lens, Ross attentively adapts Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel, constructing a perceptive narrative on the racism of the Jim Crow South. To call “Nickel Boys” timely doesn’t even tell half the story when racism still permeates America, with the film putting the era’s brutality on display. But what ultimately packs the most poignant punch here is the fight Ross’ characters have in them to hold onto their dignity and humanity against the odds.
In Baker’s modern-day anti-fairy-tale, it’s the film’s eponymous character who is marginalized on the fringes of the society. Played by Oscar nominee Mikey Madison, Anora is a dancer and sex worker striving to make ends meet, when she consents to marry the irresponsible son of a Russian oligarch. The film depicts heartless wealth, social class and the dehumanizing treatment workers receive in the hands of the ultra-rich.
A classically scaled epic, Brady Corbet’s masterful “The Brutalist” (with 10 nominations), meanwhile, dismantles the so-called notion of the American Dream in a “Godfather”-level persuasion. As such, it charts an immersive post-World-War-II narrative that navigates anti-immigrant sentiments, raging anti-Semitism and the otherizing mindset of the haves over the have-nots. These topics are regularly brought to light not only in the mainstream media but especially on social media.
If there is any cultural, social, and political revolution to be had today with Trump’s rise, James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” gives the viewer a taste of what that backdrop looked like in the 1960, when the Woody Guthrie song “This Land Is Your Land” was deemed dangerous by conservative powers, and civil rights activism was at the heart of those with progressive values in American society. As such, “A Complete Unknown” is both deeply nostalgic, and a roadmap to what the future should hold — fight and struggle through art and activism, instead of political apathy.
It’s also an apt title to answer the burning question, “Who will take the gold on March 2 after one of the wildest and most unpredictable Oscar seasons in recent memory?” It’s a complete unknown.
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