Death, deception and (little) sex: “Conclave” offers a great trinity
Ralph Fiennes investigates the sins of popes in this magnificent film
“No sane man would want the papacy,” a cardinal tells Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) at the start of “Conclave”, a new film. Perhaps that is why so many popes have been so mad. There was Pope Urban VI, who grumbled when a cardinal he had ordered to be tortured did not scream loudly enough. And Benedict IX, who not only committed rape, murder and bestiality but who also, rather naughtily, sold the papacy. And who could forget Innocent VIII, who, despite that promising name, allegedly drank the blood of young boys?
The trick of electing the universal shepherd is, then, to select the cardinal with the least sin. This can take time, as Cardinal Lawrence—in charge of the gathering to choose a new pope, called a conclave—discovers. The election in the film lasts for days. Still, it could be worse: in the 13th century it took two years and nine months. The cardinals were eventually both shut in and starved out: locked in their palazzo, they were rationed to two meals a day if they did not decide by the third day, just bread, water and wine after the seventh.
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The starvation rations have gone. The locking-in cum clave (with a key) remains. Each papal conclave becomes a locked-room mystery of biblical proportions; less a whodunnit than a whodunwhat? The magnificent new film from Edward Berger, a German director, makes the most of this. Like an ecclesiastical Agatha Christie, Cardinal Lawrence—a papal Miss Marple—investigates each cardinal’s sin over the course of this two-hour film. Naturally, this mystery begins with a corpse (the previous pope), and it offers a line-up of pleasingly sinister suspects (the cardinals who jostle to replace him).
These include John Lithgow (the smooth Canadian Cardinal Tremblay); Lucian Msamati (Cardinal Adeyemi, angling to be first African pope) and Stanley Tucci (the liberal Cardinal Bellini). The holiest of holy men would look like a villain in a scarlet cardinal’s skull cap and cassock; Mr Tucci (better known for having served the other side in “The Devil Wears Prada”) looks even worse than that. The fun comes from watching as each is undone by his sins, which are—as you might expect—the cardinal ones: pride, wrath, envy and lust.
And, as always with whodunnits, the setting is glorious. Tradition usually demands a country house; “Conclave” must instead make do with God’s. This is a departure, but it works, since God has good decorators: conclaves were first held in the Sistine Chapel in 1492. It is beneath Michelangelo’s “Last Judgment” that Cardinal Lawrence passes his.
This is a visually sumptuous film—at times, like the chapel itself, almost too sumptuous. Minimalism was never Michelangelo’s strong suit: in the 16th century one priest sniffed that the sinewy naked bodies of the artist’s frescoes were better suited to “a tavern”. This film, too, verges on the over-luscious: a scene in which flames curl around a papal ballot paper is almost perfume-ad pretty.
Silence saves it. “Conclave” is based on the book of the same name by Robert Harris, a British writer. Mr Harris’s books are commonly called “thrillers”, but they tend to eschew the commoner traits of that genre: most notably, thrills. This one is no different. Almost nothing happens here—but it happens beautifully. And understatedly. This film is swathed in silence. The Catholic church has—for good and ill—always understood the power of silence, and so does “Conclave”. Like the liturgy, it wields it to build drama: when someone drops a tray, you jump.
Mr Fiennes is perfect for the role: his is a career that has also been steeped in quiet. In “The English Patient” he smouldered silently; in “The Dig” he dug silently; here he doubts silently. Mr Harris’s book demands this taciturnity. Its epigraph comes from the writings of Paul VI, who became pope in 1963. “I was solitary before,” he wrote, but now his solitude was “complete and awesome”. Like “a statue on a plinth—that is how I live now.”
This, then, is a film about the papacy—but it is also about humanity. Popes and cardinals are God’s servants on Earth. They are also, as Mr Berger observed, “just blokes going to work”. When Cardinal Lawrence peers into the dead pope’s wardrobe, he finds papal robes in plastic suit covers.
It is about being separated from humanity, too. These are men who officiate and pontificate over the lives of 1.4bn people, but they lead lives that are utterly alien: in their cardinals’ uniforms they look like superannuated schoolboys. They are buttressed by the Vatican’s women: here you see the nuns toiling: cooking, serving, tidying up the messes—physical and metaphorical—left by their brethren. One of the best scenes comes when Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) squares up to Cardinal Lawrence. She loses—just. Even Ms Rossellini’s mother-superior stare cannot overcome 2,000 years of ecclesiastical power.
Nonetheless, this film about the world’s most powerful patriarchy is a quietly feminist one. What are the sins of “our fathers”? Ask the mothers. They probably know.
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