A cardinal uncovers a Vatican conspiracy when the Catholic church's
leaders gather to select a new pope.
Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Edward Berger
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini, Lucian Msamati, Brían F. O'Byrne, Carlos Diehz, Merab Ninidze, Thomas
Loibl, Sergio Castellitto
You know that leftover bit you stumble across when you've just finished
assembling a piece of flat pack furniture? Some little plastic doohickey
that looks like it should be important, but which doesn't seem to play any
vital role in the shelving unit you just put together.
Conclave, director Edward Berger and writer Peter Straughan's
adaptation of Robert Harris's 2016 novel, is the leftover doohickey
of 2024 cinema. It looks like an important film, with its elegant visuals
and impressive cast, but it doesn't seem to have any function. It's
neither serious nor soapy. It's a Murder She Wrote episode
without a murder. It's 12 Angry Men without the debates and
arguments. It's a movie about Catholicism that plays like it was made by
Presbyterians. I don't know why it exists. It's by no means the worst film
of 2024, but it might be the most pointless.
What's frustrating is that the setup is one of the most intriguing of all
the year's movies. When the Pope passes away following a heart attack,
it's up to the College of Cardinals to elect his successor. Tasked with
supervising the process while being an unwilling candidate himself is
Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the Dean of the College. The
frontrunner is Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a homophobic
Nigerian favoured by both the traditionalist and progressive wings of the
Vatican, the latter of whom are willing to overlook his toxic views to
install the first African Pope. Also in the race are liberal American
Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), Canadian moderate Cardinal
Tremblay (John Lithgow) and ultra-conservative
Italian Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto). A late surprise
entry comes in the form of Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a
Mexican who was secretly promoted by the late Pope.
Skullduggery ensues as it seems one of the candidates is willing to
engage in backstabbing to ensure they get the top post. The narrative
takes the approach of an Agatha Christie locked room mystery with the
sequestered Vatican taking the place of some isolated mansion on a dark
and stormy night. Rather than being killed off by an unknown assailant,
the cardinals are forced to drop out of the race one by one for various
reasons, including revelations of their murky pasts. Fiennes' Cardinal
Lawrence is the Miss Marple/Hercule Poirot figure determined to get to the
bottom of all this.
Unfortunately in practice Conclave is never as juicy as
that premise teases. Straughan's overly verbose screenplay could be taught
in screenwriting classes as an example of how not to write for a visual
medium. Everything we learn about who these men are is delivered through
dialogue, sometimes in on-the-nose speeches of the sub-Sorkin variety.
Berger never uses his camera to tell the story, rather just to film his
actors delivering their bland, exposition heavy dialogue. Those actors are
admittedly very good, but there's a sense that they're all on autopilot,
barely rising above a single note. Their characters tell us how they feel
and what they believe, but we're never allowed to interrogate their faces
to decipher the truth. We're told that Lawrence is suffering a crisis of
faith, but we never see any evidence of this beyond Fiennes occasionally
furrowing his brow so heavily you could plant turnips in the crevices of
his forehead. There's no suspense because we're never given so much as a
hint of who might be pulling the strings in this papal puppet show.
But perhaps Conclave's biggest flaw is how it's a movie set in the very engine room of the
Catholic Church and yet displays little curiosity about either Catholicism
or the Church. You can't help but wonder how much more engaging the film
might have been had it been made by a Scorsese type with a lifelong
fascination with the rituals of Catholicism. There are some well-composed
images here, but they're cold and dispassionate; Berger might as well be
filming a business convention in an airport hotel for all his disinterest
in the visual backdrop of the Vatican.
This lack of passion in the storytelling jars with the soapiness of the
plot. For all its sombre seriousness, Conclave is a very
silly movie, and it's to its detriment that it refuses to accept that it's
really just Dallas in the Vatican with JR (the
traditionalists) battling Bobby (the liberals) over who gets to inherit
Southfork. There's a subplot concerning terrorist attacks occurring
outside in the streets of Rome that ultimately reveals itself as a
contrived way of affording one of the candidates the opportunity to make a
pivotal speech that shapes the election, which is decided with an about
face so sudden it feels like the filmmakers were desperate to keep the
film under two hours. A late twist is at once timely and a relic of a more
sensationalist past, and as with the rest of the movie it's revealed
through a speech. In its preference for words over images,
Conclave might be the most Protestant movie ever to be set
within the walls of the Vatican.
Conclave is in UK/ROI cinemas
from November 29th.
