Ralph Fiennes’ Lowkey Performance in ‘Conclave’ Might Cost Him the Oscar

For over 30 years, Ralph Fiennes has been one of the most reliable leading men in Hollywood, anchoring everything from big-budget fantasy epics to grounded dramas with characteristic grace and sly humor. But for all his accolades, one particular honor has eluded him: an Academy Award. Fiennes earned his first nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1993 for his breakout role as Nazi officer Amon Göth in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, the embodiment of the banality of evil. He received a second nomination just three years later, this time for Best Actor for his starring role in Anthony Minghella’s historical romance The English Patient, and this year, he’s up for Best Actor again for his work in Edward Berger’s closed-doors Catholic drama Conclave.

It’s some of his best work yet, a subtle and deeply affecting performance well-deserving of a golden statuette, not just for the performance itself, but for all the great work Fiennes has done over his career. Unfortunately, the very qualities that make it such a great piece of acting are the same ones that make it unlikely he’ll be taking home the prize.

Conclave

4
/5

Release Date

October 25, 2024

Runtime

120 Minutes

Director

Edward Berger

Fiennes Has Some Tough Competition

The big reason why Fiennes’ performance isn’t likely to win comes down to how its inherent qualities conflict with the kinds of acting the Academy tends to favor. For those unfamiliar, Conclave is set at the Vatican, where the current Pope has just died and church leaders from around the world arrive for the titular gathering to elect his successor. As Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, Fiennes plays the Dean of the College of Cardinals, tasked with overseeing a process that involves a great deal of political maneuvering, compromise, and coalition building. Lawrence has to oversee the process while also dealing with his own grief over the loss of his friend, while emerging as an unexpected and unwilling candidate for the job himself.

It’s a lot for an actor to shoulder, but Fiennes does it beautifully, conveying his struggle with his faith and his grief in largely internal ways. Like the best film actors, he’s able to communicate a great deal through his eyes, his voice, or a subtle gesture, all without being given any showy moments to grandstand or speechify. The conclave is a literally sequestered environment, and this sense of turmoil behind closed doors extends to Fiennes’ deeply internalized performance.

Unfortunately, this kind of quiet acting is rarely favored by the Academy, who tend to vote for much bigger, showier performances, particularly when it comes to Best Actor. Several actors have won their first Oscars in recent years for bombastic roles that gave them the opportunity to go big, whether as a historical figure like Gary Oldman’s take on Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, or in roles that required a physical transformation, like 2022’s winner Brendan Fraser for his work under heavy prosthetics in The Whale. Fiennes has not one, but two competitors nominated for playing real people, with Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan and Sebastian Stan’s Donald Trump vying for the prize. He’s also up against Adrien Brody in The Brutalist, the kind of big historical epic that the Academy loves to honor.

Brody has largely been the favorite, taking home the Golden Globe for his work, though some Oscar prognosticators have questioned whether the film’s recent AI controversy will hurt his chances somewhat. Some have elevated Chalamet to frontrunner status, and his performance is certainly the kind that the Academy has gone for in the past, taking on a famous real-world figure while also providing his own singing and guitar playing. It worked for Joaquin Phoenix in James Mangold’s previous music biopic Walk the Line, so it could very well work for Chalamet this year.

Related

A Major Name Is Missing From the Best Actor Nominees at the Academy Awards

Why was Daniel Craig’s ‘Queer’ so overlooked at the Oscars?

The Changing Trends of the Oscars

With efforts to create a more diverse Academy voting body in recent years, the Oscars have become a bit less stodgy and predictable, at least in certain categories. For one thing, it’s unlikely that a movie as weird and unconventional as Everything Everywhere All At Once would have cleaned up at the Oscars in previous eras, but its success made for one of the most gratifying ceremonies in recent memory. The same goes for Parasite back in 2019, the first Korean film to take home the top prize and one of the most well-deserved Best Picture winners of all time.

Related

This Best Supporting Actress Oscar Snub Is Absolutely Infuriating

Sure, the Academy got some nominations right, but this Oscars snub is hard to ignore.

Best Actor, however, has been a bit slower to adapt. The year that Parasite took home so many awards, Best Actor went to Joaquin Phoenix for Joker, a performance that saw the actor undergo the kind of intense physical and psychological transformation the Academy likes to award. Probably the most unexpected win happened at the 93rd Awards, where Anthony Hopkins beat out the late Chadwick Boseman for his work in The Father, but given that Hopkins is considered a living legend, his win still wasn’t all that surprising.

It’s possible that Fiennes might pull out a surprise victory at the ceremony this year, if voters decide to honor the kind of quietly moving work that distinguishes a truly great film actor. While any of his fellow nominees would be deserving of the prize, Fiennes gave the kind of performance that burrows under a viewer’s skin, one that might be short on thunder and lightning, but that has deep wells of feeling under the surface. Hopefully, the Academy will break with tradition and give it the recognition it deserves.