Conclave (2024)

February 20, 2025 5:03 AM

After the unexpected death of the Pope, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with managing the covert and ancient ritual of electing a new one. Sequestered in the Vatican with the Catholic Church's most powerful leaders until the process is complete, Lawrence finds his abilities and his faith tested to their maximum.

Directed by Edward Berger. Based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris. Also starring Stanley Tucci, Lucian Msamati, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Carlos Diehz. Winner of Best Film at the 2025 BAFTAs.

The original Conclave post got deleted, so I thought I'd make a new one.

Link back to that post; feel free to repost your comments here if you wish.

posted by Pallas Athena (15 comments total)

I didn’t really know anything about this movie, and ended up really loving it. One of the great things about it is that the characters spend their time talking through their problems - no cgi fight scenes or car races to solve interpersonal problems.
posted by The River Ivel at 5:28 AM on February 20 [7 favorites]

The acting was excellent, the story not so much. A bit too pat, in my opinion, and, tbh, playing a bit too obviously to the Academy.

[Fun fact: it's based on a novel by Robert Harris, author of Fatherland, among others]
posted by chavenet at 6:01 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]

The acting was excellent, the story not so much.

I couldn't disagree more. As I said in a comment from the last post: This is the second "high dramaz while picking a new pope" film I've seen - the first was Angels and Demons, the DaVinci Code sequel where there's faff about the God Particle and a murder subplot and Ewan MacGregor just so happens to be a priest with combat flight training and yadda yadda. This was far more grounded in reality - and was still equally as compelling, if not more so.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:15 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]

I enjoyed this, but by no means thought it was brilliant. Its an interesting enough plot, with solid acting but nothing outstanding.

I didn't like the drabness throughout, it made me think about The Young Pope TV show and whether the director here felt constrained by the utter brightness that ran through every shot in that production.
posted by biffa at 6:49 AM on February 20 [1 favorite]

This was mid. There should be more mid dramas. All I want is to see halfway decent movies at a matinee and then get trapped into chatting about that one actor with an elderly lady in the lobby afterwards while we’re both waiting for people who are in the bathroom. CINEMA.
posted by bcwinters at 7:51 AM on February 20 [15 favorites]

I am only about a third of the way in, and love what I have seen so far.

The sets and acting are great and all, but a small part of me is asking, "Are you just glad to see someone making a movie about Catholics that isn't about clergy sex abuse?" Anyway, looking forward to the remaining hour or so of INTRIGUE.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:43 AM on February 20 [2 favorites]

I had not read the book or know the plot, so my brain went to standard thriller plot reveal: there has been a switcheroo of the mystery cardinal, and he is actually connected to the terrorist plot.

The photography of this was fantastic.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 10:48 PM on February 20 [2 favorites]

This isn't just a movie about the Catholic Church: I mean, if you take it literally, yes, obviously it is about the Church, but at a deeper level, if you look past the robes and ritual, it's a movie about a company man who's lost faith in the company he works for. It's about the breakdown of trust in institutions, which is the story of our times.

As I was watching it I kept on being reminded of Bresson's A Man Escaped, another film about a group of men trapped in a closed institution. I could believe the director Edward Berger was deliberately referring back to A Man Escaped, particularly in the close-ups of hand gestures, which is a very Bressonian touch.
posted by verstegan at 1:18 AM on February 21 [4 favorites]

I really liked this whole vibe of priests being very messy with each other.
posted by Carillon at 10:42 PM on February 21 [4 favorites]

I loved the acting and story. I didn’t even know what a catholic conclave was, so I learned something. I grew up catholic but I guess not that well educated. Or I forgot. I wonder who cast the first vote for Benitez? And I love Isabella Rossellini, but that has to be the smallest appearance of an Oscar nominated supporting actress ever. She was hardly in this movie at all, albeit she was a force.
posted by waving at 8:24 AM on February 22 [2 favorites]

Nerds on the osccarrace subreddit calculated that Rossellini's screentime is 8 minutes 16 seconds. They say she has the 26th-shortest amount of screentime for a supporting actress nominee, but don't break down all of the other 25 ahead of her.

Gold Derby had a list of the top 10 shortest screentime in the supporting actress category; of those, both Beatrice Straight (Network, 1977) and Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love, 1999) won the Oscar for less than 6 minutes of screentime.
posted by creepygirl at 3:36 PM on February 23 [2 favorites]

I finished it this weekend, and keep thinking about it.

The detail of using marble wall paneling in the cardinals' dormitories -- presumably because it is the most sumptuous material possible, regardless of how humble the building's use is -- keeps bothering me. But I loved all the shots of the buildings and room, emphasizing the beauty of the spaces, and now I really want to watch some high-end travel videos about the Vatican.

If I was a priest, I would want to be the shouty, fighty kind like Tucci and not a creepy reactionary like the character Tedescho (which means "German" in Italian, and I am still wondering how deliberate that was).

I am an old-enough Catholic that the image of a nun speaking up in a room full of cardinals broke me out of the movie, but only briefly.

But the story was great: the twist at the end and Fiennes' small smile were so good. Even the ambiguity/finality of "I am what God made me" is marvelous for not collapsing possibilities into certainty.

I hope plenty of conservative Catholics see this movie and get angry. :7)
posted by wenestvedt at 5:47 AM on February 24 [4 favorites]

I loved 90% or more of the movie. I didn't love the "twist" at the end, and I'm going to complain about it, but it didn't really detract from the parts I like. For a movie about a bunch of geriatric cardinals they did a great job differentiating characters right out of the gate and it made the scheming easy to follow. Tucci was great in the various "masks off" moments, Fiennes gave a solid performance to anchor the movie around. Lithgow is always going to be a little too much Lithgow for me to imagine he's fully his character, but he conveyed sliminess.

But the ending. The structure of the movie was such that it was going to have a twist. I was turning over ideas in my head: Is it just that Benitez is the surprise winner? Will it turn out that he wasn't really a cardinal after all? Somehow connected to the terrorist bombings? Nakedly ambitious and secretly manipulative?

These all would have been pretty bad twists, but this kind of drama had to have something. Then what they reveal is that he's biologically intersex. It's a twist with no connection to this film about faith, ambition and hypocrisy that I'd been watching. There's one or two throwaway lines about women in the church, I know, but it'sno more prominent than the return of Latin Mass as an issue. And the twist had no emotional resonance me, either: Male presenting man becomes pope isn't crossing any wires for me, I'd be totally fine with that. It's like a boring version of Pope Joan. It made me mildly curious about what the Vatican's position on the ordination of intersex clergy, I guess.
posted by mark k at 10:00 AM on February 27 [3 favorites]

Oh, I will add a nice little detail I really enjoyed. A bit into the movie Tucci yells at Fiennes that all cardinals are ambitious, every single one of them has already thought of their papal name.

Then when Benitez is elected he is asked what his name will be. And there is a pause, just long enough for me to think "Oh, is he the one cardinal in this mess who never even considered this?"

And even as I finish that thought he says "Innocentius." Nope, he wanted it.
posted by mark k at 10:05 AM on February 27 [4 favorites]

The motif of the sound of a small bird chirping at various points in the film (especially noticeable in Sister’s office) kept making me think “Canary in a coal mine.”

Nigerian conservative Cardinal Adeyemi dormed in Room 45. The camera seemed to linger on this particular number. As in a nod to Trump the 45th President? This would’ve been filmed prior to 5 Nov 2024.

As a permanently and intentionally lapsed Catholic for many years now, this film somehow gave me something of a fresh-eyed glimpse at the downright creepy aspects of Catholicism. So wrapped in coercively controlling secrets. Women do not even have the vote in this world. I can see now how it’s a normalized cult in so many ways.

I was worried for all of the nuns in those spaces, and relieved Pope Innocentius made it out of there alive. Cardinal Lawrence helped the turtle back to its pond.
posted by edithkeeler at 11:13 PM on March 5 [2 favorites]