Conclave: What Happens in the Vatican Stays in the Vatican
By Jim Slotek
Rating: A-
Maybe it’s actuarial fear of scaring off the international box-office of 1.3 billion baptized Catholics, but scheming intrigue at the Vatican is an undertapped movie genre.
The list of sensationalized onscreen doings at the Holy See is relatively short. The reigning potboiler-maker is Dan Brown with The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons (both film versions directed by Ron Howard).
The Godfather: Part III built its plot off rumours at the time that the short reign of John Paul I was ended by murder.
Ralph Fiennes is at the center of a Papal storm in Conclave.
And there has been at least one antic comedy on the subject of filling the shoes of St. Peter, Nanni Moretti’s 2011 Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope), in which the panicky chosen one simply runs away and hides.
The terrifically acted, taut and engrossing mystery thriller Conclave, adapted from the Robert Harris novel, sets a cinematic bar and (at least to this former altar boy) one of believability. Not that anyone without a clerical collar really knows what goes on before the white smoke issues publicly from the chimney. But it seems reasonable to assume robust politics, and possibly dirty campaigning.
The real-life, practically unheard-of resignation of the conservative Pope Benedict XVI in favour of the liberal humanist Francis speaks to the hard politics that must have preceded it.
And how oddly appropriate is it that Conclave’s closed-door war to be Pontiff in is by Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front)?
Conclave, as is usually the case (Benedict aside) begins with the death of a Pope.
Ralph Fiennes, in a performance already tagged as Oscar-bait, plays Thomas Lawrence, a confidante of the late Pontiff, and whose rank in the College of Cardinals puts him effectively in charge of the ritualistic conclave to replace him (an election in which Lawrence is also, potentially, a candidate).
This is already complicated enough, without a terrorist bombing campaign coming uncomfortably close to their cloistered confines.
The cast of politically disparate characters is seamlessly and powerfully acted by the likes of Stanley Tucci (as the lead progressive), John Lithgow (a likeable, ambitious moderate), a larger-than-life Nigerian hero figure (Lucian Msamati) who could become the first African Pope, and a hard-core Opus Dei type (Sergio Castellitto) who wants to claw the Church back all the way to the Latin Mass.
Add to that, the head nun (Isabella Rossellini), who comes bearing candidacy-breaking news about one of the Cardinals, and one Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz), an unknown who, it seems, had secretly been the Cardinal of Kabul under the nose of the Taliban.
The winnowing of candidates is often painful. And the finale includes a reveal so major, spoiling it would be a mortal sin that no amount of confessional Our Fathers and Hail Marys could assuage.
It’s shot with dialogue that reaches occasional inspiring heights, and cinematography that captures both the grandiosity of the location, and the claustrophobia of 120-or-so powerful clerics deciding the fate of the world’s faithful practically cheek-to-jowl.
In real life, what happens in the Vatican generally stays in the Vatican. But as cinematic guesswork goes, Conclave is as good as it gets.
Conclave. Directed by Edward Berger. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and John Lithgow. In theatres October 25.