Conclave: Sacred Uncertainty
by Karenna Blomberg
As an American who is (unfortunately) living in America at the moment, I did not expect an English film by a German director about the election of a new pope in Vatican City to strike so true to how I was feeling at the moment. And this is not just because the film speaks to my politics—if anything, the film is disinterested in dwelling on the more political aspects of its plot. I believe the thing that made Conclave resonate so deeply with me, and what makes it one of the best films of 2024, is its earnest appeal—from the narrative down to the production design—to reason and humanity amidst opulence, hypocrisy, and ego.
For the non-Catholics who are unfamiliar with the context of this film: a conclave is a Catholic tradition that occurs when a pope dies or resigns. All the cardinals (the highest rank of the priesthood before the pope) gather together in Rome, sequester themselves from the rest of the world, and vote on who amongst themselves should receive the most monumental promotion of their lives. Conclave follows Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), who is blindsided by the sudden death of the pope and struggles to reconcile his faith with the church’s reality, all as he is tasked with managing the conclave and overseeing the papal election.
Conclave was directed by Edward Berger, whose previous film, All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), chillingly portrayed the gruesome reality of the WWI battlefield. A story about a papal election fraught with behind-the-scenes scandal like Conclave doesn’t seem like a shoo-in follow-up feature until you watch it, and the similarities start to reveal themselves. Both war and the church are things that are treated with an insurmountable reverence that oftentimes blankets the horrors they caused. While bloodless, in this way there are shades of similarity to All Quiet in the approach that Berger takes to the film.
The magnificent cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine brings the expansive beauty of old Europe and historic Catholic architecture down to earth, further echoing the themes of the film. Wide shots of marble and beautiful churches and uniform galeros are juxtaposed with b-roll shots of priests scrolling on iPhones and piles of still-smoldering cigarette butts on the ground.
The acting performances are a central part of what makes the film work as well as it does, with an ensemble cast to make a cinephile drool, including Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini. There is plenty of drama and a few scenery-chewing moments as the cardinals make their cases for why they are the holiest of the bunch, or for why you should vote with their bloq. Fiennes, in a role practically written as “a Ralph-Fiennes-type” is obviously excellent. Cardinal Lawrence’s growing doubt in his colleagues as he tries to maintain every purity of the conclave is perfectly communicated by Fiennes’ nervous, controlling demeanor as Lawrence. Rossellini is also a standout in the supporting cast, as a sister who is sympathetic to Cardinal Lawrence’s crisis.
But while the cinematography and performances are notable, the screenplay, written by Robert Straughn and based on the book by Peter Harris, is the runaway star of Conclave. Every scene, setting, and line of dialogue is tight and dripping in equal amounts of reverence and suspicion towards not only its characters, but the greater institution they represent as well. In fact, although its main characters are all vying to be known as the men closest to him, God feels particularly distant in the film. The Catholic Church, however, is a character all its own, a looming presence that simultaneously haunts and heals and comforts and disquiets Cardinal Lawrence, in turn. While full of scandal, plotting, and shocking discovery, the action never feels soapy or sensationalized, making for a real and riveting best-of-the-year contender.
The conclave comes to serve as a potent three-dimensional metaphor—as the cardinals seal themselves in their grandiose walls and bicker about their politics, and as they insist they want no power while getting on their knees and praying for it, there is a world of millions of people just outside that, for better or worse, trust those very men as their guides to living holy, fulfilling lives. The implication is that, while both can be valuable, neither tradition nor hypothetical progressive rhetoric alone will save anyone’s soul, and that being caught up in it will only lead to endless debates in marble-lined halls while the people outside keep waiting for salvation—a point which is never hammered into your head but still makes itself affectingly clear.
I’ve seen many instances where the ending of the film has been called a “twist,” and a lot of commentators on both sides of the religious and political spectrum seem to believe it was written to make a point. It is a whole other rabbit hole to look at the political left’s reactions to this film (online cinephiles’ endless jokes about Lawrence and Bellini exploring each other’s bodies, or Letterboxd’s fixation on the vaping cardinal) and the political right’s (mostly accusations of it being “Anti-Christian Propaganda”). But watching Conclave as if it is one big political statement feels like an egregious watering down of its real, hard-hitting ruminations on when hierarchy and tradition take precedence over the people and ideas they were put in place to serve.
So don’t listen to the commentators, and as funny as it may be, don’t be swayed by the memes either. Conclave is not nearly as two-dimensional as the internet has made it seem; nor is it an attack on religion made purely for political brownie points. In addition to being an excellently produced and directed film, it is also a thoughtful, insightful criticism of moral absolutism and its danger in proximity to power. And it feels especially important right now that we see that for exactly what it is.
