Conclave begins with a dead pope and the subsequent gathering of the college of Cardinals to elect a new pope. Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes, is dean of the college and stands at the core of this sacred rite. If this description sounds like a religious drama, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you would be far from correct. Conclave is a fast-moving whirl of mysteries, a thriller filled with suspense.
Austrian-Swiss filmmaker Edward Berger has brought an exciting book from best-selling author Robert Harris to the screen. It was Berger who directed the excellent 2022 remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, so I expected Conclave to be very good. But Conclave far surpasses “very good.”
The Vatican is shown with full beauty, lush wall hangings, world famous artworks, marble staircases. The Cardinals are a showcase of rich red velvets and woolens, gold trim and jewelry, and whites for purity. It would be easy simply to admire the décor, but that doesn’t happen because the storyline is so gripping, and the cast is so remarkable.
In addition to Ralph Fiennes, the cast includes Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow. Award-winning Italian filmmaker, writer, actor Sergio Castellitto, English stage and screen actor Lucian Msamati, and Mexican actor Carlos Diehz are not as well known to American audiences, but they also put in strong performances. I recently saw Msamati give an excellent performance opposite Ben Whishaw in Waiting for Godot on the London stage.
To top it all off, Isabella Rossellini plays Sister Agnes, a nun who supervises the food preparation, but then gets involved in an aspect of the non-stop plot. Emphasizing the diminished role of women in the Church, she says hardly a word. 59 minutes pass before she speaks! As for the other women, they are drabbly-dressed, obsequious persons. They seem invisible.
As the film’s plot starts to unfold, preliminaries are underway for choosing a new pope, but complications set in. We learn of various characters’ doubts. We hear of scandals. The old-style Cardinals are racists, intolerant of many lifestyles, politically unacceptable to the liberals. Still, it’s quite possible one of these conservatives will become the next pope.
Rumors fly which need substantiation, including a possible sex scandal. One character asks, “Is this a conclave or it is a war?” The highspeed scenario of Conclave brings viewers closer and closer to the inner beings of the various Cardinals who wish—or maybe don’t wish, to be pope. We learn about their flaws. One says, “We serve an ideal. We cannot always be an ideal.” Conclave, which is available on several streaming sites, is tense, suspenseful, and possibly one of the best films of 2024.
Audrey Kupferberg is a film and video archivist and retired appraiser. She is lecturer emeritus and the former director of Film Studies at the University at Albany and co-authored several entertainment biographies with her late husband and creative partner, Rob Edelman.
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