Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci star in Edward Berger’s tense papal procedural where faith and power collide.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Based on a 2016 novel by British author Robert Harris (“Archangel,” “The Ghost Writer”), “Conclave” is German director Edward Berger’s multi-lingual follow-up to his Academy Award-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front” (2022). His new film covers 72 hours in the lives of Roman Catholic cardinals in the Vatican sequestered to choose a new pope. The lead character is the heavily-burdened Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (a towering Ralph Fiennes), the dean of the assembly and the man selected to run the procedure and lead his fellow cardinals to a successful vote, resulting in the release of white smoke, signaling to the devout gathered in St. Peter’s Square that they have a new pope.
After an opening with the pope dead in his bed, Thomas learns that one of the pope’s last acts was to request the resignation of Cardinal Tremblay (a slyly evil John Lithgow), who yearns for the papacy. Thomas would prefer the election of his doubting, reverent, dear friend Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a gentle soul with a liberal heart. To the tune of the anxious strings of Academy Award-winner Volker Bertelmann (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), the cardinals gather in the richly decorated Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace and cast their votes. Thomas himself is an early front-runner.
It may not sound very exciting. But “Conclave” is a pressure cooker full of scheming men trying to claw their way into one of the most important and more to-the-point powerful positions in world history. One of the men vying for the papacy is an openly Islamophobic Italian named Tedesco (a wonderful, disarmingly comical Sergio Castellitto). In a crucial moment, Aldo asks Thomas if he may take a chess piece from the board of the pope. Many subsequent camera flourishes and choreographic touches suggest chessboards with the cardinals and the nuns (doing all the cooking, cleaning and serving in the background) as color-coordinated pieces. Director Berger once again commands troops. But on a very fundamental level, “Conclave” is also a big, delectable piece of architectural eye candy.
Isabella Rossellini, another of the film’s great assets, plays Sister Agnes, the nuns’ proud and protective Reverend Mother. Among the cardinals who desire to don the triregnum is an African named Adeyemi (British actor Lucian Msmati), who, like other cardinals, has a damning secret in his past.
In a role requiring him to speak Latin, Italian, and English, Fiennes is the detective, or as he puts it, “the witchfinder,” of this papal procedural. He is the one who must ferret out the facts and know what is going on behind the scenes. One of his duties is to acknowledge a new cardinal from Mexico named Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who has served congregations in war-torn Congo and Afghanistan. Surprisingly, the charismatic, mysterious newcomer scores a few votes. We see many Black nuns, archbishops, and cardinals. The men of color tend to gather together for meals and outdoor smokes. Some of the cardinals’ regalia recall the biblical magi from the East. Lighting by Frenchman Stephane Fontaine (“A Prophet”) is notably uniformly dark. Nuns busily shape gnocchi in the kitchens. A car bomb shatters a window, showering some in the chapel with clouds of dust and shards of glass. Archbishop Wozniak (Jacek Koman), who tells Thomas that Tremblay was sacked, is a drunkard. Someone ominously quotes Williams Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming” with its “rough beast.”
While “Conclave” is not quite the equal of Berger’s monumental “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the film is beautifully made, and the story is great fun if a bit strained at times. The screenplay by Peter Straughan (“The Goldfinch”) sometimes reeks of Agatha Christie and her often mechanical plot twists, and it all ends with an arguably too-timely reveal.
But the actors shine in their crimson cassocks, skullcaps, and other togs. Fiennes, who has generated deserved Oscar buzz, has more costume changes than Audrey Hepburn. Berger filmed at Rome’s fabled Cinecitta Studios, switching from soldiers in uniforms to uniformed priests and nuns. “Conclave” is a throwback to such expensive and architecturally decorative studio fare of yore as 20th Century-Fox’s 1965 Carol Reed adaptation “The Agony and the Ecstasy” (also shot at Cinecitta). Like the latter, “Conclave” is often pure camp. But it certainly is an eyeful of a movie.
‘Conclave’
Rating: PG for thematic material and smoking.
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini
Director: Edward Berger
Writer: Peter Straughan, Robert Harris
Running time: 120 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Causeway, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport and suburban theaters
Grade: B+
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