Conan O’Brien saves the Oscars as the show completely fails to meet the moment

If last year’s hand-wringing over Jonathan Glazer’s mild condemnation of the genocide in Palestine proved anything, it was that a little goes a long way in terms of political activism at the Academy Awards. Glazer, who won for The Zone of Interest, didn’t have to say much at all to drive a news cycle of backlash from all predictable circles: zionists, right-wing politicians and “keep politics out of the arts” types who inevitably skew towards a troubling individualism forged in apathy and self-interest.

Last night, No Other Land, a film co-directed by Israelis and Palestinians, won Best Documentary film. A Palestinian, Basel Adra, went on stage to address the world: “We call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people.” It felt like a radical moment, one that challenged the status quo. His speech was followed by one of his co-directors and co-subjects, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham. The sharp plea by Adra began to unwind with false equivalencies and soft language. Despite the radical power of several moments in No Other Land, its presence among the nominees and its win put into clearer focus the fact that the Oscars will only ever be a platform for engaged politics by accident and by virtue of its enormous reach, and a film that wins an Academy Award inevitably toes the line of so-called respectability. 

Ignoring the rather empty invocations of representational politics, the rest of the night was pure spectacle. Oscars host Conan O’Brien, one of our last truly great entertainers, harkened back to awards nights of empty illusion and glamour. Amidst a dark period in American and global politics, the night had an effortless lightness to it; a jokey pleasure that didn’t aspire to be anything but a celebration of itself. A speech like Glazer’s last year and a film like No Other Land may feel radical in this environment, and perhaps their mild liberal framing might be more than enough, but it’s difficult not to feel that winning an Oscar confirms our worst suspicions: that any movie capable of effective change and revolution will never be nominated, let alone win. We’re well past the idea that “talking about it” (or even voting) contributes to strong political action. If anything, mild platitudes both normalize and inscribe inequality into the status quo. The Oscars, in their desire to promote and celebrate the art form, ironically contribute to the medium’s steady decline into irrelevancy. 

As the night occasionally waded into the unease of the current American moment, driven by the uncertainty of Trump’s unpredictable and vindictive regime, it highlighted the inability for popular art to meet the moment. If Anora, last night’s big winner, is meant to be anything more than a screwball comedy, a movie that portends to have big things to say about sex work and wealth disparity, by the end of the film, after Ani has suffered and been roundly punished for her ambition and willfulness, we return in the film’s final moments to square one. Popular cinema, even at its most “independent,” cannot imagine new ways of seeing or being. 

What exactly do we expect from our film artists? Brady Corbet’s self-centred speech at the Golden Globes, where he used his platform to talk about the director’s cut, felt like a premonition of Adrien Brody’s interminable and self-serving rambling as he accepted his second Best Actor win for The Brutalist. Though, as established, the Oscars are hardly the space to engage with questions of art and politics, it’s hard not to watch these two speeches in particular and feel how they inevitably informed the paucity of the film’s ideas and values. Despite its supposed ambition, The Brutalist is little more than a monument to emptiness itself. Last night confirms that. 

While we lost many exceptional artists last year, the inability of the Academy Awards or its members to address the loss of David Lynch, one of the only true great American film artists, speaks to a failure of imagination and an unwillingness to grapple with real greatness. The Academy Awards have always been an industry event with only passing concern for artistry, but their failure in this case only furthers the idea that mediocrity will prevail and popular cinema will likely fall. Faced with true greatness, the Oscars can’t help but crumble.

Last night’s Oscars was not a bad show. It was in many ways the platonic ideal of what the Oscars should be, in large part thanks to the off-the-charts likability of Conan O’Brien. It should put into focus, though, what we expect from our art and actually challenge critics and audiences alike to reflect more deeply on what it means to engage with a work of art. ■

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For the complete list of 2025 Oscar winners, please visit the Academy website.

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