You don’t need to be Catholic to understand Conclave.
The story is brimming with political intrigue, underhanded manoeuvres, concerns for past behaviours, progress vs tradition, “we” vs “they” and weighted with a twist some might find total gimmickry.
Finely cast, the actors give lift to the ecclesiastical melodrama.
Performances and dialogue snap, crackle and pop.
The film is fundamentally a power-struggle potboiler and, regrettably, some Catholic viewers will be uncomfortable.
Remember John Huston’s The Cardinal (1963) – six Oscar nominations, Carol Reed’s The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) – five Oscar nominations, and The Two Popes (2019) – three Oscar nominations?
With five Golden Globe nominations, Oscar and BAFTA should treat Conclave well.
Director Edward Berger previously won multi-international awards and five Oscars with German-language All Quiet on the Western Front (2022).
When the unexpected death of the fictionally current, unnamed and beloved Pope happens, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), Dean of the College of Cardinals, a man with a shaky hold on his faith, is tasked with running one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events, the covert process of electing a new Pope.
Switching from Italian to speaking from his heart in English, Cardinal Lawrence welcomes the college, “There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts.”
The words cause a stir among the cardinals; believing it’s his stump speech to papal election, it is the movie’s centrepiece.
The conclave process is accurate to centuries of tradition.
The Ring of the Fisherman is removed from the dead Pope’s finger and destroyed to prevent forgery of papal documents.
Announcement is made that the throne of the Holy See is vacant.
The papal apartment is closed off with crimson ribbon and sealed with a wax papal stamp. Convening from all parts of the world, the College of Cardinals is sequestered in apartments, the Domus Sanctae Marthae (St. Martha’s House) for eating, sleeping and cognitive biases between votes. Windows and doors to the Sistine Chapel, where the election occurs and ballots are cast, are darkened, shuttered, and locked to maintain secrecy. Some newer security measures are shown as well.
The soft-spoken, yet mysterious Benitez (Carlos Diehz), Archbishop of Kabul, Afghanistan, produces documentation of his appointment by the late pontiff to Cardinal, but who kept the matter secret. Screenwriter Peter Straughton strays and gets canon law wrong. The promotion of – traditionally known as nominations “in pectore” (within the chest) – are unrecognised, void, if not announced publicly by the living Pope who made the nomination.
Favourites jockey for position. Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) puts human fallibility on display when overtly campaigning for papacy. He is a flamboyant, fire and brimstone conservative, a traditionalist who wants the language of Mass reverted to Latin. According to electors, Tedesco would back step, take the Church into its past congregations might reject.
It has been suggested that a position of great power should go only to those wise and humble enough not to want it. Down-to-earth American liberal Cardinal Bellinni (Stanley Tucci) doesn’t want to be Pope, even tells others not to vote for him, but says to Cardinal Lawrence about liberalism vs conservatism, “This is a war – and you have to choose a side.”
Sordid rumours of shady behaviour dog Canadian Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) and African Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) has a secret he’d prefer never surfaced.
Formidable Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) should be invisible in her catering and organisational position, constantly curtseying and averting her eyes from the cardinals, but she does have observant ears and eyes. Her mouth, tightly shut, might have something to say.
Some will find heretical ideologies and anti-Catholic undertones portraying the Church as a relic stubbornly resisting progress. The conspiracy in the conclusion could shake the foundation of the Catholic Church – but is, thankfully, no more than remarkable fiction.
