"Conclave" Creates Thrills out of a Pope Election
The new movie for thinking adults deserves a trip to the movie theater
Anybody getting into a church or charity situation has a big problem: who should lead?
We’ve got a kind of saying around here about that: that the person who doesn’t want the position should get the position. That could be referring to church elder, the chair of a university committee, or the local vice president of the Kiwanis Club.
Raise the stakes tremendously, and the problems around powerful positions compound. How about Pope of the Roman Catholic Church?
The new adult thriller “Conclave” seems as if it was written and by people who deeply understand the problem. High positions need fearless people. But fearless people are often selfishly ambitious. Can you trust anyone gunning for such a role?
Shoot, if you’re a Roman Catholic cardinal, can you even trust anyone who says they *don’t* want the position? After all, there’s the doctrine of original sin, with the prophet Jeremiah telling you as baldly as anybody that “the heart is desperately wicked.” Modesty can be false modesty. Behind a humble appearance could be a den of pride.
The movie stars Ralph Fiennes as Thomas Lawrence, the Cardinal-Dean overseeing the election of a new Pope. Set in a contemporary or very-near future world, “Conclave” makes such an election, by a group of 108 cardinals, seem like a exciting foray into many political and ethical problems every single person reading this will face, on at least a smaller scale.
For Lawrence, a friend of the late Pope who has just died, he’s on the side of the “liberals,” who are entirely worked up by the possible election of a hothead Italian “conservative” cardinal. Everybody, liberals and conservatives, seem wary of the African faction, whose leading candidate gets the most votes on first ballot.
Showcasing individual men and their half-stated, half-hidden wants, immediately the movie creates enormously delicious tension around the cardinals’ spiritual task that seems to require Machiavellian machinations.
Certainly those machinations are a temptation. Everybody feels the alluring pull of the office of Pope, including the liberal’s preferred candidate Arlo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), who says in one conversation that he does not seek the position, and yet in other backroom conversations it’s clear that he’s desperate to beat the hothead conservative and the anti-homosexual African cardinal.
The weight of everything is on Lawrence. He senses one major problem with a second liberal candidate, Tremblay (John Lithgow), who denies being disavowed in a deathbed conservation with the late-Pope. Another major problem arises simultaneously with the leading African cardinal, whom the liberals can’t stand for his anti-homosexual views, and also whom some faction is trying to undermine using seedy details from his past. Maybe its the so-called noble liberals?
And then there’s the mysterious stranger: Cardinal Benitez, a late arriver to the conclave. Nobody has ever heard of him. Supposedly, the late Pope appointed him Cardinal of Kabul, in secret. Is he a fraud?
Pretty soon, as the cardinals vote in successive ballot runs — the leading candidate must get a majority vote to become Pope — Benitez’ candidacy picks up steam. The liberals also seem to be losing out.
And Lawrence himself, who wishes to leave his position as Cardinal-Dean once the conclave is finished, starts to pick up votes. How ambitious is he, this man who wants nothing to do with getting elected, supposedly? The liberals begin to rally around him.
I called “Conclave” a thriller,” yet it’s realistic and personal. For good reason the movie stays away from high Hollywood drama, allowing tension to build towards a finale that’s a mind-bender.
Ignore the PG-rating: this one is for thinking adults.
The movie asks too many great PolySci 101 questions to count. One of them involves the nature of all elections, which even here, when the cardinals are called to be humble men of God, simply can’t avoid backroom dealings and slyly manipulative attempts to sway voters. Is Machiavellianism the way of all elections?
For the Church and the liberal faction, despite their attempts to avoid “traditionalism,” they themselves have their own tradition that they are desperate to keep. What won’t they do to avoid the *change* that the conservatives might bring about?
I delighted most in one of the movie’s greatest puzzles: when should you keep secrets, and whenever you shouldn’t keep secrets, when and how should you announce them?
Cardinal Lawrence could write volumes on that. He finds out many secrets that could benefit himself, his side, or the other side. There’s no avoiding the appearance of manipulation, whether and how he’d open up the information he has.
Keep in mind that in real life, Roman Catholicism has long been rocked by the pedophilia scandals, apparent secrets that were kept quiet, possibly to avoid negative consequences and negative press.
Yet I’m wondering if the movie turns that around and makes a decent case for keeping some secrets when reasonable. Then again, does “reasonable” mean, for Lawrence, that which benefits his position and political preferences?
I mentioned the mind-bender ending. Do not look up anything else about this movie, because when it arrives, the art of the movie strives hard to get the viewer to think critically.
The one thing I must say about that ending is that a few of my commenters are Youtube are calling the movie “woke.” This is extremely short-sighted.
No, it’s ambiguous — there are several light and several dark interpretations of the movie. I can see the “woke” claim, yet I believe I can make a better case that the movie has a strong conservative reading as well.
The end allows for deep mystery, which Lawrence himself prays for as the conclave opens. It’s not clear that the liberals are the better, more virtuous party here, although they ardently believe that they are. What they decide to do may undermine the Church more than anything any other candidate could ever do.
Keep a strong eye on director Edward Berger. He directed the great 2022 war film “All Quiet on the Western Front.” With that and “Conclave,” he’s proven to be an excellent, thoughtful maker of film-art.