From word go the ins and outs of the Conclave and the election of a new Pope are laid bare. Anything with Ralph Fiennes in is fitted with a gold standard, a high expectation for director Edward Berger, who has yet to find a style which suits his intimate, often singular character-driven stories. Conclave may look and feel like the polished Your Honour series but it depends on the beauty and architecture of Italy, the blasts of dark red and black are beautiful but they are expected. Everything from The Young Pope to The Two Popes has this beauty to it, the visual scope of these Vatican City-featured films has a free ride. And yet the real beauty is in the drama, the uncomfortable truths of the Catholic Church which, for all the expectations of faith and honesty, is sometimes not the case.
Fiennes and this all-star cast including John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci, the latter finally throwing a real dramatic bone with plenty to sink his teeth into, carry Conclave well. Fiennes has the deep voice necessary for carrying those hushed conversations, the discussions of subterfuge which flutter through. All of it is handled well by the cast and even better by Berger who wastes no time in weaving those strange narrative threads, the red herrings and real threats which appear to Lawrence (Fiennes) as the papal conclave continues. Conclave does more than poke at the obvious motions and recent stories of the church but toys with the view of tradition and its role in keeping religion advancing. Slipping relevancy may be the perception but the intricate deception of those small huddles that Conclave keeps returning to is its sharpest tool.
Tucci and Sergio Castellitto have a magnificent back-and-forth with one another despite rarely discussing it with one another. Berger makes clear the segments and, while he does well to keep them separate, their inevitable blur towards the end is to play fairly safe with the structure of Conclave which would do well to get dirty, to lean into those precious moments of silence. True to form, Fiennes manages to make a lead performance as subtle as is needed, to blur with the background and prop up those moving parts which Berger is clearly so interested in. Thankfully, we can be too, following the plainer weavings with strong writing to guide it through. Tucci is the flagbearer for a modern church, the sense of this vote as warfare rather than the choice for a greater good is, while difficult to swallow, the truth of any group which needs a leader.
People in power will use their secrets and lies as leverage, that is the point of Conclave. It uses the papal election as a backdrop, these notions of lust and sin frequent everyone, let alone the potential Pope. Is the search for holiness which these candidates perform an impossible task? Conclave talks of crisis and controversy while making its message one of unsure futures. Fiennes is in remarkable form as ever but take note of the subtle silences provided by Isabella Rossellini, the slow unravelling of this black spot or that shady past. Some are worse than others – some will use their popularity as leverage while others will disintegrate their own in inaction for the reason of purity. Conclave pulls at a lot of threads and, while ambitious of it and its slick direction to do so, it can never push on from entertaining. It just does not have the guts to do it.
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