The windows in the Sistine Chapel are high. When the bright Roman sun shines through them they bathe some of the fantastic Renaissance frescoes of Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Ghirlandaio in glorious light. But they leave other sections obscured by darkness. Men, too, are composed of light and dark and even supposedly pious men, even extremely powerful clerics, are still men. Mortal, doubtful, conflicted, capable of both good and bad.
Edward Berger's new film Conclave (adapted from a 2016 novel by Robert Harris) is such an enjoyable watch because it leans into this side of humanity and doesn't shy away from it. The elderly pope has died and Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (an excellent, as ever, Ralph Fiennes) has been tasked with presiding over the conclave that will appoint the next pontiff.
Not an easy task. A global 'College' of Cardinals (so that's the collective term) arrive in the Vatican where they are sheltered, or 'sequestered', from the outside world and its goings on while they decide, via voting and politicking and - occasionally - the odd sharp practice, who will become the head of the global Catholic church, one of the most important jobs in the world presiding over a 'flock' of well over a billion people.
We're introduced to the runners and riders. Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci) is an American liberal and very much the continuity candidate - Lawrence backs him. The Italian traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is Bellini's nemesis. His views on women and Islam are, to say the least, unreconstructed and Bellini sees it as his job to stand against Tedesco and try to prevent what he believes would be a hugely regressive step for the church. Even if Bellini is clearly being disingenuous about his own ambitions.
Is Lawrence himself also being disingenuous? He insists he has no interest in taking the papacy, instructs his followers to vote for others, expresses doubts about his faith, and we even see him vote for Bellini several times. Yet a nagging suspicion remains that Lawrence, the man very much at the heart of the drama, may not be showing his full hand. His real motives may also be shrouded in the cloistered darkness of the Vatican's gilded chambers.
Other contenders come in the form of Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), and rank outsider Cardinal Benitez (Carl Diehz). Mexican Benitez has been serving in Kabul (hardly a hotbed of Christianity) and was unknown to even the other cardinals before the conclave, the Nigerian Adeyemi has views on homosexuality that make him completely unpalatable to Bellini, and the supposedly moderate Canadian Tremblay is under suspicion regarding his own shaky relationship with the previous Bishop of Rome.
Lawrence, with the assistance of Monsignor O'Malley (Brian F O'Byrne), has to unravel all the different threads of these stories as he tries to do the right thing by himself, by his fellow cardinals, and by God. The direction of events is changed more than once following a series of very clever twists (some you could just about see coming, others completely wrongfooted me) and a vital intervention by Isabella Rossellini's Sister Agnes whose understated curtsy had the audience in the Peckhamplex, myself included, guffawing.
There were a couple of other funny moments but unlike Succession or The Death of Stalin (which tackle similar themes to Conclave - just without the ecclesiastical dimension) nobody could mistake this thriller for a comedy. In a world of scarlet cassocks, crucifixes, rosary beads, prayer, and, er, turtles there are a group of men who are as weighed down with ambition, hubris, and moral uncertainty as any other men and these men must choose, from their own number, a leader who will become 'infallible'. It is imperative they choose the right man. But will they choose the right man?
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