Movie Review : Conclave (2024)

Whenever a pope dies, Christian leadership becomes the coolest thing on the planet for a month or so. People get invested on who the cool cardinals are, Vegas comes up with betting odds on who is gonna be his next Holiness, contenders get profiled in media, etc. After the new pope is elected, nobody cares anymore. That’s because conclaves are a fun, archaic competition that we have little to no control over and it makes up for great stories. Therefore, it would’ve been difficult to fuck up a movie about one.

I’m glad to say Edward Berger's adaptation of Robert Harris' novel Conclave slaps, but it’s not the movie you think it is.

Conclave tells the story of Cardinal Lawrence (an inspired Ralph Fiennes), a man struggling with his own faith tasked by the recently deceased pope to organize the conclave for his succession. When the worst of the worst assholes of Christianity (and his buddy Bellini) start rolling in the Vatican and claiming their stake at the big job, Lawrence starts to understand his purpose a little better. The pope refused to let him quit on his job because he needs to make sure the right man gets chosen to lead Christianity into the future.

Spiteful Old White Men

This is not the smart, arthouse movie it pretends to be. It’s a chew-bubble-gum-and-kick-ass-movie cosplaying as a pope film and it's fucking awesome. I was already familiar with Robert Harris’ twist-heavy writing style, but it was adapted by Peter Straughan into a tight, tense screenplay and carried by top-tier interpreters of spiteful old white men and I never wanted anything more from a movie than spiteful old white men going at each other for two hours, which is basically all Conclave has to offer.

I'm oversimplifying here, but the screenplay is so snappy and dramatic that it wouldn't be far removed to have the three lead parts played by John Cena, Randy Orton and Triple H. They would be mean mugging one another a lot more, but the essence of the conversations would be the same. What raises Conclave (barely) above an iconic two hours wrestling promo is Lawrence’s crisis of faith, which torments him as some of the cardinals are voting for him to become pope. He first rejects it, but the idea fucks with him bad.

My favorite scenes in Conclave were the back and forth between Lawrence and his bro Bellini (played by a masterful Stanley Tucci) who claims he doesn't want to become pope either, but kind of wants the job anyway to keep fascists away from the job. Both men poke and prod one another's performative humbleness and examine their own repressed desires for power and control. Fiennes and Tucci play off each other to perfection, creating moments of beauty and truth in this show of smoke and mirrors.

The Weird, Contradictory Nature of Being the Pope

Since Conclave consists in two hours of white men wearing robes (plus Isabella Rossellini) arguing and trying to trap one another, you need to understand the stakes in order to appreciate the masquerade. Lawrence is over the bickering, politicking and in-fighting inside the church and want to dedicate himself to God, but God (through the now dead pope) gave him the purpose of managing all that bickering, politicking and in-fighting. That’s why becoming pope himself doesn't seem (to him and to us) like a bad idea.

But you can’t cheat your way into the position and Lawrence and Bellini spend their entire conclave making sure no one tries to unfairly shit on their competitors and hoists themselves into power for the wrong reasons. Are their reasons better and their way of conceiving the church more moral and just or are they jockeying for power themselves. This is the question at the heart of Conclave that makes it a little more of a spiritual experience than watching The Rock talk on Monday Night Raw.

*

I really liked Conclave. This is not a deep movie by any means, but it’s fun and fast paced and I find it hilarious that it cosplays as something more self-important than it is. There are no guns in the movie, but there are similar scenes in other movies that totally end in gunfight. It’s a show, just like real conclaves are. With that said, I thought it deserved its Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and I’m looking forward to what Edward Berger and Peter Straughan do next. Watch it on a Friday night, with a bottle of wine.

8.1/10

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