CONCLAVE (Edward Berger 2024)

[Chris Knipp]

RALPH FIENNES AND STANLEY TUCCI IN CONCLAVE

EDWARD BERGER: CONCLAVE (2024)

A thriller about electing a new pope

Ralph Fiennes' best film role, some say, is this one about a Cardinal who becomes the mediator at the Roman curia when a new Pope must be chosen. Edward Berger, the German director of last year's Best-Foreign Oscar winning All Quiet on the Western Front, has helmed this tightly-woven, thought-provoking drama about the papal "conclave," the locked-in secret meeting of the College of Cardinals to elect a new pope from their number. The movie, lush and quietly intense, is based on the 2016 Robert Harris novel which Guardian reviewer Ian Sansom, apologizing for the cliche, called "unputdownable." That quality of holding our rapt attention has been preserved in the film.

The baseline of the story is the slow, ceremonial procedure, a series of votes held in the grandest of surroundings (the Sistine Chapel is their meeting room), speaking ritual words of Latin or Italian (though English and Spanish are heard at key points), dressed in their red outfits, wearing their tall hats - and roiling with conflicting emotions, hostilities, suspicions, and rivalries. This is after all one of the most powerful and visible positions on earth, like being half an emperor, half a god. And the desirability and sheer scariness of this role is highlighted.

The selection is basically a simple process, just a series of votes on handwritten paper ballots, placed in a large urn and counted, then stitched together and burned, with a smoke signal sent up to the faithful outside, black smoke for every inconclusive vote, white smoke for that celebratory one when the time arrives to say "Habemus papam," we have a pope. Nanni Moretti's 2011 film of that name told a more whimsical version of this narrative. Here, the stakes are serious and this dry process is anything but. The leaders shift with every vote. And between those votes are many discussions, rumors, and worse. This movie, which unfolds very like a play, a very glittering one, proceeds through a series of bombshells, which each time bring about a total about-face.

Who deserves to win, and who will? And who wants it? Cardinal Lawrence, though highly visible, strongly professes not to. He is troubled by a crisis of faith, not in God but in the Church, and claims a need to retire from the managerial office of Dean of the College of Cardinals and join an order far away from the Vatican. Is this false modesty?

Rivalries quickly emerge that are more clear. The tall, rather shrill Canadian, Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow, studiously unappealing) wants it; but can he be trusted? Does he deserve it? We will hear more about that. Cardinal Lawrence wants Cardinal Bellini (a vociferous, nicely contained Stanley Tucci) to take the job. Lawrence makes a lovely little speech, much needed in our "awakened" era, about questioning: "If there was only certainty and no doubt," he says, "there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God grants us a pope who doubts." Is it a surprise that with this plea for openness and liberalism at its center, the film critic for Catholic Review finds Conclave not to his liking and warns the faithful against it?

But there are other elements at play in the voting. Perhaps it's time for a non-white, African Supreme Pontiff, and Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) rapidly emerges as their favored representative. But there is also a conservative, Italian element led by a menacing éminence grise, Cardinal Tedesco (veteran Italian actor Sergio Castellitto). If Tedesco wins, Bellini warns Lawrence, his papacy will shift rapidly into reverse, erasing all the progress of the last forty years. The most conservative elements will take power.

There are some rumors and revelations. There are intense discussions between Cardinals Lawrence and Bellini. Lawrence tries to maintain a neutral stance. Fat chance: there is just too much at stake for that. And there's a dramatic wild card, an unexpected newcomer, Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), Cardinal of Kabul of all places, who makes his mysterious presence felt. Benitez, weathered veteran of hotspots, now of Afghanistan, produces documentation that the late pontiff appointed him to the cardinalate in pectore, keeping the matter secret. He has the voice of one who has fought in today's wars, and that earns notice.

The surprises are good right up to the end. And finally a woman, in the person of Sister Agnes, a nun who was very close to the deceased Pope (a brilliant but sadly underused Isabella Rossellini, who doesn't get to speak a word of Italian), gets a wee small voice with a revelatory speech, followed by a mocking curtsey. Her sole presence is a reminder that in the Catholic Church, women still don't matter much.

Peter Straughan's screenplay from Robert Harris' novel creates the rumble of a conflict among multitudes, yet when you think about it all at the end, Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes) tends to dominate every scene as if Conclave is somehow all about him and the rest is decoration, spice - though it's spice for our thoughts, if we have them, which hopefully we do.

There are distractions. The images seem murky at times. A climactic speech is in Spanish: do the cardinals all know it too, as well as Latin, Italian, and English? Knowing that filming is strictly forbidden at the Vatican, we are constantly distracted by wondering how they (under set design boss Suzie Davies) made all these lavish settings up at Cinecittà. Volker Bertelmann, who also did the score for All Quiet on the Western Front, does something more subtle here. Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine and costume designer Lisy Christ do fine work, though everything is so conventional, it may not be noticed at awards time.

Quibbles aside, this is a handsome and well-crafted movie with a first-rate cast and a stunning look. It's one of the year's best and an Oscar contender. Try to see it in a movie theater - hopefully, unlike me, not one seat away from someone munching popcorn and slurping Coke all the way through.

Conclave, 120 mins.,debuted at Telluride Aug. 30, 2024, showing also at Toronto, San Sebastien, Vancouver and Zurich, followed by a dozen other festivals and releases in numerous countries, in the US Oct. 25, 2024. Metacritic rating: 79%