It’s the calm before the storm of the 97th Academy Awards and the announcer, Nick Offerman, is rehearsing his lines on the auditorium’s PA system. He introduces the nominees and trails the potential stories. He says: “Conclave won six awards tonight, including best picture,” and then pauses a moment to allow this momentous result to sink in. Upstairs at the Dolby theatre in Hollywood, the early arrivals have barely had time to get a drink in their hands. Now, all at once, they look stricken and cast nervous glances back and forth. Is Offerman joking, or has he just emitted white smoke by electing Edward Berger’s papal thriller? The Oscars don’t even start for another two hours and they worry they might already know how it ends.
Los Angeles has burned and the planet is in uproar, but the Oscars show must go on, for better or worse. For years, I reported on this event from afar, simultaneously loving it and hating it from my desk in London. But this felt like the right moment to view the gaudy circus up close, when its very existence hung in the balance briefly and at times the awards race threatened to veer into the ditch. Do the Oscars still matter? Should they have even happened at all? Where supporters see a beacon of hope, critics observe an unseemly bonfire of vanities.
