I Just Saw

I just saw Conclave and it was great. Based on a novel by Robert Harris, it deals with the sequestering period in the Catholic Church when a pope dies and the cardinals must elect their successor. Ralph Fiennes plays the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Thomas Lawrence, a stoic and serious man caught up in internecine squabbling after a prologue in which he and his peers gather around the late pope’s deathbed, accompanied by candidates for succession including Tremblay (John Lithgow) and Bellini (Stanley Tucci). As the conclave begins and the cardinals vote, ambition and skullduggery bubble up.

I really enjoyed this film. I didn’t realise how much I was in the mood for an intelligent, extremely stylish thriller where the focus is on setting and characterisation to such a degree that it doesn’t rely on the usual violent set pieces and melodrama common to Hollywood films. Nor does it feel too small-scale, though, like it would be better suited to television, a la The Queen (2006) and other films that dramatise arcane institutions.

In this way it’s a small miracle by director Edward Berger, whose cinematography and score are exquisite, the latter mining mystery and tension to a level that you’d expect from a Hitchcockian movie with superficially higher stakes; and screenwriter Peter Straughan, whose dialogue crackles like that which you’d find in a classic noir. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, he has a play called Noir.)

The performances are fairly uniformly excellent. Fiennes is always fantastic and this is one of his typical imperious, troubled/troubling authority figures, although this time the dial leans towards troubled and Dean Lawrence is one of his more sympathetic characters. Lithgow is one of my favourite actors and elevates the ambitious, reptilian character whom he plays here. Tucci accentuates the complexity of his liberal but weak-willed cardinal.

The story’s themes of election, ambition, political skullduggery, fear-based conservatism versus progressive ideals, and sexual scandal are so prescient that I wonder if the film was commissioned to reflect the American election and invite comparison. In that context, Conclave’s final twist feels charmingly naive. It appeals to the cardinals’ better natures and the unstoppability of social progress. If only.

Rating: 3.5/4