“Well, I’d say this is a pretty fair vision of hell,” says Monsignor O’Malley (Brían F. O’Byrne) of the noisy renovations taking place in the Vatican Palace. “Don’t be blasphemous,” retorts Thomas Lawrence (a superb Ralph Fiennes). “Hell arrives tomorrow — when we bring in the cardinals.”
In the opening moments of Conclave, German-born director Edward Berger’s latest drama, Lawrence learns that the pope has just died. As dean of the College of Cardinals, it now falls to him to gather the more than 100 cardinal electors, sequester them in the hallowed Sistine Chapel and choose a new pontiff.
Two Americans and a Nigerian emerge as early favourites: Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), a progressive; Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), a centrist; and Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a man whose outward affability is at odds with his anti-gay views. The clear frontrunner, however, is Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), an Italian cardinal who opposes any attempts to modernize the church.
Adapted by screenwriter Peter Straughan from British author Robert Harris’s 2016 novel, Conclave is as twisty and efficient as any great political thriller. It doesn’t take long for the cardinals — men of God, but also insecure, petty and calculating individuals — to form factions and shift their allegiances from one candidate to another. Berger (who helmed 2022’s Academy Award-winning All Quiet on the Western Front) and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine capture the increasingly tense proceedings through a series of exquisite shots.
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Yet Conclave isn’t a cold experience. One of the film’s chief pleasures is watching modern-day objects comically coexist with an ancient, lavish world of robes and rituals: cardinals smoke e-cigarettes, use high-end coffee makers and scroll on their smartphones.
Berger and Straughan also make light of how little the clergymen understand about the outside world. When the conservative Tedesco reacts to a terrorist attack in Rome by preaching against tolerance, the mysterious Vincent Benítez (Carlos Diehz), a Mexican cardinal leading a dangerous mission in Afghanistan, is quick to question him: “With respect, what do you know about war?”
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Even more biting are the moments that illustrate how women have been relegated to the background to cook, clean and serve as office administrators. In a brief but poignant role, Isabella Rossellini plays Sister Agnes. It’s an inspired casting choice, as Rossellini’s real-life mother, Ingrid Bergman, not only portrayed both a nun and Joan of Arc but was also vilified by the Catholic Church in the 1950s for her affair with Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, Isabella’s father. Each time Agnes gets to speak — whether for herself or her sisters — it feels momentous.
Much of the conversation around Conclave will likely centre on its late-stage revelation, a climax that is at once audacious, hopeful and entirely earned. “There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty,” says Lawrence in a sermon. “Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.” By the film’s coda, Lawrence must determine whether he truly believes his own words.
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Robert Liwanag is a Toronto writer and a senior editor at Ensemble.
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