When Choosing a New Pope Becomes a Soap Opera

Early in the film Conclave, cardinals from around the world descend upon Vatican City after the death of the pope. Dressed in their scarlet vestments, they head to their guest rooms. A montage shows them rolling their suitcases through cavernous entryways, taking smoking breaks, and checking their iPhones. When they’ve finished settling in, cigarette butts blanket the marble floors.

These images are striking. Here are ostensibly the most virtuous men in the world not only acting like normal human beings but also littering inside the headquarters of their faith. How revolting! How blasphemous!

And how juicy. Based on Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, Conclave, in theaters now, follows the titular process of electing a new pope, a secretive task that the film suggests is mostly a popularity contest full of rumormongering and backstabbing. Caught in the vortex of egos is Cardinal Lawrence (played by a sharp Ralph Fiennes), an Englishman who’d tried to resign recently from his post over his growing doubt about his beliefs, but who was charged by the late pope to lead the conclave anyway. For days, if not weeks, he and his fellow cardinals must vote on who among them should take over the role, and continue voting until they reach a two-thirds majority. Determined to oversee a fair fight, Lawrence plays conciliator and detective as scandals arise, but his ongoing crisis of faith descends into a crisis of confidence.  

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Conclave is by no means the first project to use Vatican City as a paradoxical backdrop. The 2017 HBO drama The Young Pope (renamed The New Pope in its second season) portrayed worship as an absurd, often surreal exercise, while the 2019 film The Two Popes turned the transfer of papal power into a buddy comedy. But Conclave feels especially timely. The screenwriter Peter Straughan and the director Edward Berger (whose previous movie, All Quiet on the Western Front, landed a Best Picture Oscar nomination) have constructed a propulsive psychological thriller that doubles as a blatant election-year allegory. Despite its heavyweight subject matter, however, the result is remarkably playful; without flattening the importance of the papacy or abandoning the novel’s attention to detail, Conclave exposes the sometimes farcical nature of institutional practices by examining the fallibility of those who run them. Even the most righteous among us are simply human, Conclave points out. In some ways, it’s comforting to think of the most ancient rituals as merely works in progress.  

Consider some of the personalities Lawrence—himself intimidated by what being pope requires—must deal with: There’s pompous Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), a Canadian who’s practically salivating at the chance to lead the Church; Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), an overconfident Nigerian candidate with a dedicated flock; Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a progressive American who says he doesn't want the papacy but bristles at competition; and the Italian Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Catellitto), who’s both bigoted and bigheaded. Conclave offers a stacked cast of scenery-chewing character actors who render routines—say, scribbling one another’s names onto pieces of paper to cast votes over and over—both strangely earnest and preposterous. These are adult men tasked with filling a position almost 1.4 billion people care about, but they’re also just, well, men.

But much of the fun of Conclave comes from the film’s initial appearance as a no-nonsense prestige project. The production team re-created the Sistine Chapel with some tweaks to enhance the tension, including the precise shade of red the cardinals wear. Berger mounts whispered conversations in shadowy hallways, deploys slow-motion sequences backed up by an operatic score, and builds striking tableaus of cardinals warily eyeing one another—elements that are then deliberately paired with hammy, self-aware dialogue. The cardinals follow decorum and have contemplative debates over who deserves the papacy, yet they’re most excited when they trade gossip. They gather in cliques to complain about their rivals and accuse one another of various indiscretions. Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), one of the many nuns working behind the scenes to look after the electors, has a monologue revealing a cardinal’s sins that drew gasps and applause at the screening I attended. Even Lawrence, the steadiest of the lot, gets caught up in the melodrama. “I feel as if I’m at some American political convention,” he laments when he’s dragged into yet another sidebar to discuss yet another rumor. He participates anyway, of course; hearsay is hard to resist.

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Lawrence comes to find the Church’s newly vacant position tempting too. In its best moments, Conclave uses its protagonist to explore the genuinely high stakes of the election as well as its sillier diversions. As the conclave continues—and the more votes he receives from his peers—Lawrence starts to reconsider his rejection of the papacy. In a late scene, Bellini observes that every cardinal secretly has a papal name in mind. Lawrence looks torn, as if afraid to admit that truth to himself. Amid the hokier material, his internal conflict raises serious questions about the nature of spiritual devotion: Do Lawrence’s personal beliefs matter when collective worship is involved? Would running against Bellini, a friend, mean abandoning his own values? Is progress possible in such a rigid institution?

As with other recent papacy-centric projects, the film leaves these questions unanswered, and never deeply interrogates the Church’s biggest ongoing scandals, including allegations of clergy sex abuse. Conclave also adds a few too many contrived twists in its quest for narrative drama, but the movie moves nimbly enough to avoid a collapse into pure fantasy. Its revelations about piety as a facade may resonate best with viewers outside the Vatican, but I suspect that some on the inside would confess to having had the same thoughts.