Papal Bull

by Stoker

To escape the dullness of January and the deep despair of the anti-Trumpers – “He moved the whole thing inside so nobody could see how small a crowd there was”; “Melania pulled off a great stroke with that hat, he couldn’t get near her” - Stoker has been watching a lot of films, mostly, let it be said, Westerns.  Nothing like proper baddies, arid landscapes, and relentless sun beating down on grim January nights.  But let’s keep real cinema alive; your correspondent ventured out to see Conclave, a magnificent study in political manoeuvrings for that other most powerful job in the world.

Conclave is based, pretty closely it is said, on the book of the same name published in 2016 by Robert Harris.  (The lead character in the film is English but Italian in the book; presumably to allow Ralph Fiennes to take the lead role.)  Harris, or at least his books, were described to your correspondent as books that nobody ever admitting to reading, but which sold remarkably well at airports.  Rather in the way that very few people admit to voting for D Trump, but he still won a robust victory.  To be fair to Harris, Act of Oblivion (which ought to be filmed), his Cicero trilogy, and Ghost, not very loosely based on characters who just might be Tony and Cherie Blair, are well-written and well-researched books; and Ghost was a brave book for a close friend of Blair to write (or a cheap shot).  But Conclave is not one of his best. It was published in 2016, before the Presidential victory of The Donald that year.  We will come back to this point.

But, whilst not such a great book, it has become a great movie.  Some of that is superb casting but a lot more is to do with that old Agatha Christie device of securing all your characters in a tightly controlled space and letting them rip on each other.  Here we are in the Vatican.  The popular old Pope has just died and now the Cardinals must come together to elect a new leader of the worldwide Roman Catholic church.  When the electoral conclave begins, the electorate - 108 of them - are locked into the Sistine Chapel and into their lodgings (and transferred each morning and night by luxury coach between the two).  No contact with the outside world is allowed; no conversations, no briefings, no tipping off to the press.  And until they reach a two-thirds majority for the new guy, that is how they must stay.  Imagine that, Donald and Kamala; no leaks, no smooching financial backers, and a two-thirds majority.

Ralph Fiennes is Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, the Dean of the College of Cardinals, who is responsible for the running of the conclave. He alone is able to communicate with the outside world, and as Trollope explains in “The Warden” about another slightly odd plot device, this has to be true because if it wasn’t, the plot would not work.  This is after all, a thriller, a political thriller, and the twists and turns do require a little bit of outside intervention.  Much of this is through Sister Agnes, magnificently played by Isabella Rossellini, who is responsible for the accommodation and comforts for the sequestered cardinals, and is Lawrence’s channel to the outside and to certain information which comes to hand.  Stanley Tucci is the Democrat candidate, and Sergio Castellitto plays the MVGA (Make Vatican Great Again) chancer. Just joking.  There are in fact six candidates, representing different strands of Catholicism but also some familiar political orientations, and providing goodies and baddies of various goodness and villainies. No women, of course, because, well… obviously.  Time perhaps that there were, you might think, but this is a slow-moving institution with two thousand years of the eternal verities behind it.  The deceased Pope may have wanted to speed things up. He has left a series of little hints and tricks that trip up poor Dean Lawrence, a man struggling with some aspects of his own faith.

This all may sound a bit patronising, but Conclave is a seriously good movie, sort of mostly believable – though one keeps asking oneself: “do senior religious figures really behave like this” And answering oneself: “well, they are frail humans after all, and men at that.”

But what really makes the film is the quality of the acting; Fiennes can only be described as tremendous.  The camera lingers in extraordinary close-up on the ageing and agonised face of a man struggling with faith, reluctant to do the things he must do, borne down by the burden of high office and the extreme necessity that the right decision must come out of the conclave, for the Church and Humanity.  No goodie or baddie here; a real man, a man of God, who, whatever his doubts, believes that he will be guided by God to the right courses of action.

Great acting too by Tucci and Rossellini, and indeed by the rest of the cast, though Castellitto has the tricky task of playing a boorish, loud, vulgarian who speaks before he thinks.  Nobody we know then. Though he might bring unexpected change and reform to this great institution, given the chance.

Which brings us to the possible grounds for complaint about this otherwise great movie.  The characters are mostly highly believable and well-played, the atmosphere brilliantly evoked, the cinematography very impressive.  But intermingled with the plausible strands of Christian Catholic beliefs is a political overlay which does not quite meld successfully with a group of holy men having to guide the future of their church.  It was written before the 2016 Presidential election and filmed before the 2024 fight. Robert Harris’s political and social views of life we can probably surmise (former Blair supporter; left Labour Party when Corbyn became leader).  Edward Berger, the film’s director, is Austro-Swiss but lives mostly in Germany and has kindly shared that he supports the German national football team even when they play Austria or Switzerland. That tells us nothing. But the film, intentionally or not, ironically or not, appears to be more Bidenist leaning than Trumpist leaning; certainly more Pope Francis leaning than Pope Benedict leaning.  Benedict good; Kamala good.  Trump: my God, you even ask? Such are the mores of our times.

It is a good enough film that it will certainly still be watched in twenty years’ time, if only for the superb acting of Fiennes, who ought to win the Best Actor Oscar for this painful and moving portrayal.  He probably won’t, up against Adrian Brody for The Brutalist and Bob Dylan, or at least Timothee Chalamet being better at playing Dylan than Dylan himself ever could be.  Rossellini might just win Best Actress.  But I suspect in twenty years’ time the political overtones of Conclave will be regarded as a little eccentric.  No matter; it is a proper thriller, wonderfully played, and an insight for an increasingly secular world into the mysteries of religion and faith.