Watching Conclave, it’s hard to believe there have not been many – any? – thrillers set within the sequestered space of cardinals choosing the next pope. Audiences flock to religious subject matter, and hothouse environments where individuals jockey for power are also highly cinematic in nature. When you consider the specific scenario of the papacy, where a person’s ambition to ascend to that highest of Catholic church offices is effectively disqualifying for their fitness to do the job, you get that additional layer of complexity to intellectually stimulate the audience, already stimulated physically in terms of pulses pounding and all that.

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Edward Berger’s follow-up to All Quiet on the Western Front realises all that potential, while sprinkling in a light dose of the preposterous that is not disqualifying for its ambitions as a 2024 awards contender. Conclave is not a “thriller” in the traditional sense – there might not be a single hand laid physically on one character by another, nor a single character whose pace exceeds that of a brisk walk – but it surges forth on the sort of adrenaline that keeps it highly watchable despite its overall staid subject matter. And if there’s one too many disqualifying scandals for a sequestration of just a couple days – there’s that word “disqualifying” again – then that’s just the right amount of preposterous to make it a good time at the movies.

Indeed, the reigning pontiff has closed his eyes for the last time in the opening moments of Conclave. Among those standing over the body is Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), whose sacred duty it is to oversee the selection of the pope’s successor. It’s also an unwanted duty, as Cardinal Lawrence attempted to resign his post during a recent crisis of faith, only his boss would not accept the resignation. Thus begins an immediate summoning of all the cardinals to Vatican City from their posts around the world, to kick off a process familiar to us, even though it sometimes goes decades between usage, involving voting with secret ballots and an eventual disgorging of black smoke so the world knows a new pope has been selected.

Given their even-keeled presentation to the media and to their millions of supporters worldwide, it’s tempting to think of this ceremony as a series of candidates magnanimously rejecting the support of their fellow cardinals and saying they couldn’t possibly, but thank you very much. Conclave presents quite a different view of this. There are those who wave their hand in a polite gesture of decline, but this may only be for show to earn them more votes. Then there are those who nakedly vie for the opportunity. Plus there are unknown secrets from meetings with the previous pope in the days before his demise, which may play a significant role in who is qualified to do this job and who is not. It’s even suggested that the timing of the pope’s demise in relation to these meetings is suspicious.

The most prominent candidates include Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), who would be the first African pope; Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), an American who may or may not have been asked by the pope to resign in the final meeting of his life; Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a supporter of the church’s most right-wing extremes; Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), who opposes everything Tedesco stands for but claims not to want the papacy for himself; and Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), the Mexican-born cardinal stationed in Kabul of all places, whose status as a voting cardinal has only just been revealed during this conclave. Even Lawrence himself gets votes as the ceremony proceeds through several days at an impasse.

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Given what we see publicly from popes, murmuring quietly in Latin as they seem as likely to be on their death bed as walking around in a funny hat, it’s hard to believe that any of the men we see here are truly on the verge of becoming a worldwide icon of the Catholic church. But as the characters frequently discuss, they are just mortal men prone to their imperfections. And there are imperfections galore with all of the candidates, even if Lawrence’s chief drawback is only that he has his doubts. But as Lawrence himself says in a memorable speech, certainty is the opposite of faith, and the next pope needs to be one who lives in the uncertainties of life.

One thing that’s certain about Conclave is that we are witnessing the ascendancy of a first-rate technician in Edward Berger. Foreign directors transition to English-language filmmaking all the time, but rarely do they do it as smoothly, and with as challenging subject matter, as Berger does here. Despite a sort of inevitable histrionics in the proceedings, Berger gets excellent performances across the board, hot-blooded when they need to be, at other times relying on subtle changes in expression as new information is learned. Fiennes is the standout here, though the actor has been so good for so long that it isn’t surprising the way he’s able to hold the screen. He functions as the linchpin not only for a voting process among cardinals, but for an ensemble of actors.

(L to R) Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence and Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini in director Edward Berger's CONCLAVE, a Focus Features release. Credit: Courtesy of Focus Features. © 2024 All Rights Reserved.

Visually, this adaptation of the 2016 novel by Robert Harris is crisp and clean and dynamic. Berger and screenwriter Peter Straughan stay generally within the bounds of realism here, despite a temperature that is undoubtedly heightened (at least to some degree) over a real-world conclave. But that also leaves room for visual depictions by Berger of moments that deviate from realism, as when the remaining candidates appear as isolated cardinals sitting by their lonesome in a suddenly vacated voting chamber, or when the collateral damage of a terrorist attack sends shattering glass down from the heavens at a precise moment of voting intensity, like the input from an informal member of the voting body: God Himself.

At its core, Conclave is something of a whodunnit as well, only instead of trying to figure out who murdered somebody – spoiler alert, the pope was not actually murdered – we’re trying to ascertain who will get the majority of votes from his peers. As with any good whodunnit, it’s never the person you first suspect.

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Above all, there’s also something inherently fascinating about watching this process unfold, purely from the perspective of the ceremony of it. As we watch popes scribble names on crisp white voting ballots and deliver those ballots into an ornate urn by releasing a plate that sits atop it, then watch as another cardinal pokes holes through them to make sure they aren’t counted twice, then finally listen as all the votes are read and then tallied, we do feel like we’re a fly on the wall of a real conclave. And even if this is not what it is actually like, Berger has made us believe it, effortlessly. It’s the best mere mortals can do to ensure fairness, and if the result is to select a less than ideal man for the job – as has been the case numerous times throughout history – then that’s a form of uncertainty we’ll all have to live with.

 

Conclave is currently playing in cinemas.

9 / 10