There’s something hilarious, and wonderful, about seeing actors you know striding importantly around a soundstage version of the Vatican while dressed in official cardinal garb. That’s the magic of Edward Berger’s papal drama Conclave, or at least part of it. Stanley Tucci wearing his red Zucchetto tilted jauntily toward the back of his head, ‘30s newsboy-style? Sign me up! Ralph Fiennes indicating that the metaphorical burden on his shoulders is much, much greater than the actual weight of his scarlet capelet? I’m all over it! Conclave, the story of a huddle of cardinals scheming and counter-scheming as they attempt to choose a new pope, is great fun. It is also fiction. (The screenplay was adapted, from Robert Harris’s novel, by Peter Straughan.) But even as it captures the allure of Vatican style—the swingy gold ecclesiastical necklaces, those soft red leather slippers—it makes a more overarching serious point: the Catholic Church must change, or risk becoming as desiccated as the bones of a long-dead saint.
Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, a papal dignitary who, upon the death of the big boss, the Holy Father, is responsible for gathering all the word’s cardinals at the Vatican to elect a replacement. This responsibility makes him miserable: not long ago, he’d tried to slip out of his vaunted position, citing a crisis of faith—about the Church, not God. But the boss said no. Now there’s no stopping the stream of cardinals hustling to the Vatican from all over the world. (Conclave was filmed largely at Cinecittà Studios, and its facsimiles of the Vatican’s painted treasures and delicately veined marble interiors appear to be dutifully accurate.) Awaiting the arrival of these vaunted men is an army of nuns, who greet them by popping their tablets into plastic bags—there must be no contact with the outside world as they fulfill the somber task of pope replacement. These nuns will also act as silent servants, ferrying the men’s food from kitchen to table with cheerful acquiescence. The chief nun is Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini, convincingly no-nonsense), who oversees all this women’s work, ensuring it’s up to the unmeetable standards of these very important guys, as well as the Lord Father above.
Most of the cardinals arrive humbly, merely wishing to fulfill their mission as responsibly as possible. Among those is Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who’s originally from Mexico but has been serving the Church from, of all places, Kabul—he’s so under-the-radar that Lawrence doesn’t even have him on the guest list. But others are angling visibly for the job. The dead pope’s right-hand guy, John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay, thinks he’s a shoo-in, but you can tell his motives are impure by the way he ogles his former boss’s golden rings-n-things. Cardinal Bellini (Tucci), is much more humble, and far more liberal. He also claims not to want the job. “No sane man would want the papacy!” he tells Lawrence, though perhaps not even he is as ego-free as he seems. Then there’s Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), who swaggers in like a high-roller, speaking Latin as if it were a living language. He thinks the Church has become far too liberal; he’s ready to blast it back a few decades, or even centuries. He also believes an Italian—like himself—would make the best pope. As he and Lawrence make cardinal small-talk, he points with undisguised disgust at Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), who is Black, indicating what a horror it would be if someone like that were to get the job.
Lawrence and Bellini know what’s up. As the selection process commences—the men gather solemnly in the Sistine Chapel to drop their white voting cards onto a little golden plate—they know they’ve got to persuade the other cardinals to vote strategically. Scene by scene, the intrigue mounts. There are scandals. There are whistle-blowers who are perhaps a little too fond of the drink and thus possibly untrustworthy. There’s even a terrorist attack. Through it all, Sister Agnes wrangles her servant-nuns with the utmost efficiency, seeing everything and saying nothing. Meanwhile, Lawrence becomes more and more anxious: the weight of overseeing this momentous decision, one that will determine the Church’s near and far future, is almost too much for him to bear. Beneath his red cap, his eyes glimmer with exquisite anguish. Here and there, violins saw ominously. At one point, the cardinals, all dressed in crisp red and white, board a bus to a fancy meeting area decorated with gold lions. The visual sumptuousness of Conclave and its fake Vatican is off the charts: it might be enough to make you want to convert. Maybe.
In Berger’s hands, it all works a treat, right up to the movie’s shockeroo surprise ending. Berger’s 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front won the Best Picture Oscar, and he guides this film, too, with a sure and steady hand. Any person who was brought up as a Catholic will tell you that we’re suckers for pageantry. You can’t blame us: we were raised on an irresistible combo of spiritual mystery and fancy gold embroidery. Conclave allows us to revel in all that stuff, but there’s a somber undercurrent here too. In the end, the film is pro-Church—but only if the institution can bend toward the future, inviting individuals and groups it has marginalized into the fold. It needs to radically rethink its archaic views of women’s roles within, and welcome, rather than alienate, the LGBTQ population. In other words, it needs to be more like the actual Jesus and less like the movie’s Cardinal Tedesco. Do the cardinals of Conclave fulfill that mission? You’ll have to see for yourself. Meanwhile, remember that not all superheroes wear capes. But then again…
