By Francisco Silva -
I wonder how a film like Conclave plays for people who didn’t grow up in and around the Catholic church. Its centuries of tradition haven’t changed since Pope Julius II invoked the Fifth Lateran Council in an attempt to reform the Vatican during the rise of Protestantism. The buildings are still the same, and the dresses and the ceremony are performed with such pomp and circumstance precisely to impress the peasantry. The church prevailed as a bulwark of Western culture even when the world changed and spread beyond borders.
The image of old men in long, colourful dresses standing quietly inside rooms adorned with golden baroque statues and Renaissance paintings takes me back to being told off by a late-teen acolyte for talking too loud during the homily. But for someone who didn’t live in a world of midnight Christmas masses and consecrated hosts, I can imagine them seeing Conclave as an image from another planet or another time. Different and yet recognisable enough.
Conclave holds dearly to that uncanny strangeness to hold our attention. It starts with a bunch of Cardinals around the bed where the Pope has just died. They are about to call a time of death, but not before a series of essential actions must be performed. The paramedics patiently waiting are invited in to transport back the body. On the way out, two guards lock the door (with rope and stamped red wax, of course) as if everyone had prepared their whole lives for this moment. It was done today as it was when Pope Gregory XV was born in 1623, minus the paramedics in reflective jackets.
Director Edward Berger constantly brings up that dichotomy between old tradition and our modern times. We see the Cardinals taking cigarette breaks, eating together in a canteen like they’re in high school, separated into groups of like-minded people (the Italians, the French, the Hispanics, the Africans, etc.). My favourite is a stray shot of a Cardinal doomscrolling on his phone. Shot without a shred of suspicion for his actions, just a man checking his buddies on Facebook. It reminded me of Nanni Moretti’s criminally forgotten We Have a Pope and that sequence of the Cardinals playing volleyball.
Conclave starts when the Pope dies and everything that happens after. Played like a political thriller via theatre play – a Habemus Glengarry Glen Ross if you know well – we follow Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) tasked with organising the Conclave that will nominate the next Pope. Right away, a series of factions are created. Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) is the preference of the progressive aisle of the Church, Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is an ultra-conservative traditionalist, Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) is a Social Conservative who represents an outdated vision of the world, and Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) is the preference of the moderates. The selection is rocked by the unexpected visit of Benitez (Carlos Dietz), a soft-spoken man who is revealed to have been conscripted in secret to protect his life as a Cardinal to the Archdiocese of Kabul.
The rules state the Cardinals vote for their preference as often as necessary until one gets a clear majority. You may remember the white smoke—if the College hasn’t reached a consensus, the chimney will burn black. So crowds gather outside for as long as necessary, holding their breath, hoping to see that famed white smoke.
Adapting a novel by Richard Harris, Berger and his writer Peter Straughan pace Conclave with the cadence of a good spy and political thriller. It’s all men whispering and plotting to each other, meeting in secret rooms and hiding in even more secret shadows. It just so happens that those men wear long red dresses and have every one of their steps conditioned by centuries’ worth of conventions.
The arrival of Benitez only shakes the group as he mysteriously comes up on the votes. Little by little, each candidate becomes involved in controversies and plots until only two candidates become viable. And that process, intricately woven by the script, is so entertaining that it’s not an exaggeration to say Conclave is the most satisfying crowd-pleaser of the year.
Fiennes feels like he was made to play the role of someone like Lawrence. A Brit playing a man devoted to his ruler, history and tradition? Say it ain’t so. His Lawrence is dedicated and reserved but not pervious to temptation when the idea of himself being nominated floats around.
If the film falters, it is on the cartoonish representation of Tedesco, the conservative Cardinal talking like a guest on Joe Rogan. It feels slightly incongruous in a film that carefully threads the line of similes without falling into exaggeration.
That said, it’s too little to hamper the enjoyment. As a whole, Conclave passes its message loud and clear—that progress prevails against the stubbornness of old men set in their old ways. The ending crushes with a revelation so shocking that our audience audibly gasped. In retrospect, it’s the perfect conclusion for this film—a final challenge for the institution that cannot be reversed.
Verdict: 4 out of 5
More entertaining than you’d expect from a Vatican political thriller. No cheap thrills, no wasted plot. Just a good, trimmed old-school crowd-pleaser for adults.
