Conclave, the Film Festival, and the Netflix Ugly Filter

By Clayton Howard

To say I was starstruck at the London Film Festival screening of Conclave, directed by Edward Berger, would be an understatement. It was the first major film festival screening I had attended, and the expected pomp and circumstance did not disappoint. An enormous screen shines upon row after row of seats—an arrangement initially intended for concerts—yielding an effect quite different from the normal movie theatre experience. You are not just here to watch a movie, an easily replicated event experienced by millions around the globe, but rather you are attending a singular, unique occurrence. The feeling is intoxicating.

Then enter the stars. Seeing Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini, three absolute generational talents, in the flesh standing close enough to touch is truly revelatory. The host poses a few easy questions, but these stars are not here for an interview. They are here to wow you and the impact is palpable. Conclave is described by our host as a ‘true prestige film,’ and I fully believed her. How could I not? In that moment Conclave practically radiated prestige, I couldn't help but be struck by the combination of star power and presentation of a film festival premiere like this. The actors, director, and host leave the stage, and the film starts.

That is where the problem begins.

Conclave, though presented with such flair and esteem, looks like something made for streaming. The drab grey colour grading, the overreliance on showy symmetrical shots, and the stark depth of field creating a constant ambient fogginess all call to mind a later episode of Netflix's The Crown. This aesthetic, which I have personally dubbed the Netflix Ugly Filter (trademark pending), purportedly improves the viewing experience on a mobile device. Berger's previous film All Quiet on the Western Front was picked up for distribution by Netflix even before production began. This completely permeated the core aesthetic of the film as considerations for its intended presentation via streaming completely overshadowed any other artistic choices. It seems that Berger has not adjusted his approach since. Even with a bona fide cinema distribution deal through Focus Pictures, Conclave is still cursed with the Netflix Ugly Filter. This streaming aesthetic feels deeply inconsistent with everything I had been presented thus far. The grand stage, the A-list actors, and the excitement of being part of an exclusive screening contrast starkly with the Netflix Original look and feel of Conclave.

Films are extremely malleable experiences. This was not always the case, or at least not as strongly as it is now. Originally, the filmgoing experience was highly controlled. The only way to see a movie was to watch a projection of the literal film, almost always in a theatre and almost always with others. Early films were seen as a spectacle, a true event in the way that we still treat live theatre (for the most part). Many early showings could not be widely reproduced—live orchestration made each viewing truly unique. Though any sense of irreproducibility had been lost long before streaming (TV movies and home video were and are issues meriting their own discussion), the possibility of watching Lawrence of Arabia on your smart phone while you're falling asleep has fully democratized and de-sanctified the act of watching a movie.

The film festival tries to evoke the early days of attending the cinema. Intended as an irreproducible experience, the film festival possesses all the spectacle and exclusiveness distracting you from the fact that you are watching the exact same movie everyone else will see in a couple of months (or weeks). This is part of the variability of viewing a film. Just as a painting seems more important when put on a gallery wall, a movie feels more special when the world-famous actors come out and blithely field a few softball questions beforehand.

The Netflix Ugly Filter is, in part, a matter of taste. I personally hate the way it makes movies look, but more importantly, I hate the way it brought me back down to Earth during my viewing of Conclave. The instant I thought, ‘Oh, this looks like a Netflix movie,’ I was reminded that I was watching something inherently reproducible, and my viewing experience was far from special. The magic of the film festival was lost, and this comedown from my initial ecstasy deeply impacted my opinion of Conclave. As movie theatre attendance falls and streaming company-distributed films become a constant presence at festivals (2023's May December was mercifully spared from the Netflix Ugly Filter while Apple TV+'s 2024 war drama Blitz was not so lucky), movies are and will increasingly be made with streaming in mind. Thus, the initial awe I felt with the spectacle of the film festival panache will only continue to be lost. The feeling of individual connection to films that these festivals so desperately try to recreate will diminish until the only reason to attend one is to brag that you saw something three months before it was unceremoniously released on Netflix.