Conclave, a Quiet Masterpiece, is the Papal Thriller We’ve Been Waiting For

Conclave, Edward Berger’s taut new papal thriller, is excellent. And before I continue with this review, I want to dwell on and draw your attention to the descriptor “papal thriller.” Because that’s what this movie is, and that earned points from me before the movie even began. Maybe it’s because I attended Catholic school in my youth and so now feel an urge to attend any tale interrogating ecclesiastical dynamics, or maybe it’s simply that the conceit of “intrigue at the Vatican” is too singular not to find appealing, but if I’m being honest, I’ll admit that I was always going to like Conclave. But I’m here to report now that I was also impressed by Conclave.

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Based on the novel of the same by Robert Harris and screenwritten by Peter Straughan, Conclave is the story of Dean-Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes, never better, and that’s saying something), the Vatican official charged with organizing a papal conclave to elect a new pope, following the death of the previous Holy Father. A papal conclave is a secluded assembly of all the cardinals in the Catholic Church, who remain together, casting ballots for a new leader, until a majority has been reached.

Cardinal Lawrence is a meticulous manager (competent to such a degree that it seems to have worn him down), the perfect manager for an event so punctilious and ritualized and sacred as a papal conclave. But, once all the cardinals have been sequestered together and political schmoozing begins in earnest, Cardinal Lawrence finds himself not only in charge of the proceedings, but also finding out what really happened to the previous Holy Father, whose death has seemed to become more and more mysterious.

Thus, Conclave is a detective story, but more than that, it is a mystery. It is about a man who, in his vocation to and service of the Church, has lived for a long time accepting the sense of mystery in his life, but who suddenly finds that everything around him is a mystery: the political motivations of his colleagues, the secret ambitions of his friends, and even the Church’s ability to carry out the work of God. In a world of whispers and gossip and secrets and rumors and pleas and deals, Cardinal Lawrence becomes the only man asking questions.

Conclave is about faith, but it doesn’t turn all of this into a metaphor about the existence of God, which, while that would be fine, is certainly refreshing; the film is subtle and clever, more invested in questions about human nature than the divine: being able to trust one’s associates and friends, being able to know, truly, what rests in their hearts. Cardinal Lawrence’s work grows more challenging when a new, extremely inscrutable figure arrives at the Vatican, shortly before the sequestering begins: a Mexican cardinal, Father Benitez, who has served as the Archbishop of Kabul and who had been made a Cardinal only very recently, before the previous Holy Father had died. No one at the Vatican knows about this appointment, just as no one at the Vatican knows what happened in the deceased Pope’s final meeting with another Cardinal, Tremblay (John Lithgow), whom, it is suspected, may have been sacked by the Pope himself just before his final breaths.

Lawrence’s work of uncovering the truth is self-motivated (both because of his general fastidiousness and his nagging personal need to find explanations in the world of unfulfilled questions in which he lives), and it’s an extremely difficult task, especially because all of the information circulates in wispy, insubstantial ways: whispers, echoes, muffled conversations overheard from down the hall. The film’s sonic language (paired with its breathtaking mise-en-scene of cavernous, baroque marble architecture; echo chambers upon echo chambers) is one of murmured speech and susurrous ambient noises, punctuated only by the occasional jarring yell or the nondiegetic and ominous grunt of a cello.

Every artistic fiber of the film works together to create a sense of this strange world, stone-cold and repressed and rigorous and grand just as much as it is extraordinarily fragile, impressionable, and feeble. I frequently lament that color has been drained from the movies, but this is not the case for Conclave; director of photography Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography delivers the film in rich reds, greens, creams, and teals as much as a Titian painting. If ever a film’s visuals were worthy of an “amen,” it’s Conclave‘s.

Conclave, the literary progenitor of which was published in 2016, can’t help but feel like a resonant and very clear political allegory—not merely for American politics (Harris, the novel’s author, is English), but for the general state of the world. (It’s worth saying, though, that its release date so close to the United States Election Day feels very deliberate.) But Conclave is about the twenty-first century world. It feels only somewhat about the real Vatican, whose current pontificate, Pope Francis, is certainly the most progressive pope in modern history. But Conclave instead uses its setting to critique both the growing threats of fascism in modern culture and the longstanding and historic fascisms of the Church itself (ones that no real-life Pope, no matter how progressive, can undo).

Both of these ills are inhabited by one character, Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a brash Italian priest hungry to ascend the papacy; he’s a misogynist, an Islamophobe, and in all other ways extraordinarily conservative: he wants to repeal measures from the Vatican II council that took place from 1962-1965 (the legendary update to church doctrine that modernized the church in numerous ways, including allowing mass to be spoken in languages other than Latin). He’s basically the Donald Trump of the Catholic Church, armed with his own Project 2025, and numerous Cardinals, from Lawrence to his good friend and papal candidate Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), know that it will be a devastating blow to progress, freedom, and fairness in the world, if he becomes pope. Another rival, Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) from Nigeria, is militant in his condemnation of homosexuality; but some think this isn’t a bad concession considering the positive optics of electing the first African Pope.

Bellini, on the other hand, is running on a platform of liberal values—including expanding the role of women in the church, a notion that terrifies many of the cardinals but seems like it might slightly gratify Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), one of the hardworking nuns who oversees the maintenance of Vatican City. Sister Agnes is a minor player in this film, but her presence is extremely weighty. She serves to remind the audience of the ultimate patriarchy of the Church; the film carefully reveals how the nuns in the Vatican are essentially servants to the men, expected to be silent and clean and cook and do everything for the priests. Conclave has a secret, tongue-in-cheek feminism about it that expands as the film goes on to make a neat little case for Catholicism’s ultimate institutional fear of women (some dramatic irony, given what the audience already knows about Christianity’s systemic fetishization of the Madonna),

Throughout, Conclave is a striking, stunning undertaking, a bold screenplay handled with great understatement and care, and delivered via a series of perfectly calibrated performances. May audiences flock to it, in theaters, and remember it come Oscar season. Let us pray.