Conclave
Updated: Feb 23, 2025
Conclave, a frightfully faithful portrait of the political division and conflict in the church.
After the sudden death of the Pope, Thomas Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is chosen to run the election for the next Holy Father in the isolated and undisturbed confines of the Sistine Chapel. Lawrence is forced to navigate the power-hungry Cardinals’ ambitions for the title and bring to light any dark secrets that would prevent a truly faithful Pope from being elected. It becomes clear very quickly that no candidate is without their own sinful past. Lawrence’s conviction and leadership make himself an attractive candidate, for which he insists he is unsuitable due to his own crises of faith, yet Lawrence’s contempt for candidates threatening to bring back traditionalist and oppressive ideas finds him unconsciously chasing the vote for himself, as well as his friend and popular open minded Cardinal Bellini played by Stanley Tucci. What ensures is an unspoken battle between the Cardinals, where whispers and secrets could break or make any of them as the next Pope.
Adapted from Robert Harris 2016’s novel, Edward Berger brings this text to life in an enormously entertaining and thrilling costume melodrama. With sharp murder mystery esc camera angles and shots, with a sprawling number of Cassocks, Ferraiolos, and Zucchettos to gaze at, Conclave plays like an action film with prayers at times, underpinned by Volker Bertelmann’s nerve rattling score persistently setting the tense stakes. It follows a similar suit of classic talky thrillers like 12 Angry Men (1958), as Lawrence tries to encourage a sense of reasonable doubt amongst the Cardinals, in their open-mindedness for each other’s ideologies. "Certainty is the great enemy of unity" Lawrence proclaims in his sermon proceeding the conclave.
It’s frightfully faithful portrait of division and conflict in the Church and large-scale politics. While most of the hot topics that divide the Cardinals are only name dropped, the film retains the weight and significance of these subjects in quiet agitation. The role of women, sexuality, gender, and abuse are very much on the minds of these men which is very real in the church right now.
Fiennes is a compelling and nuanced screen presence who with the smallest movement in his eyebrows and chin delivers an exceptionally attentive performance. The presence of John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci were less convincing with more straight and singular characters, like most of the cast it looks like the cassocks are wearing them, but Ralph Fiennes is defiantly wearing his own. Then comes in the quietly insightful and conquering presence of screen legend Isabella Rossellini playing Sister Agnes the head caterer. Agnes spends most of the film as a silent passive observer, but who knows more about the corruption and deceit taking place amongst the Cardinals than Lawrence does. Her silence is finally broken in one revolutionary outburst which could come across as a bit soap opera style dramatic, but Rossellini makes it memorably dignified for her disturbed and fiery delivery.
If there is a criticism of Conclave is that it does indulge in the costume drama style at times more than delving deeper into specific debate, and it knows what side it is on from the outset. But it’s not really about the ideas themselves but the mindset that a committee should work towards to discuss them. Conclave playfully ventures through this uncertain puzzle to build to a deliberately challenging but positively outlooking solution. It's a film very worth seeing and especially for those in positions of power.
Comments