Conclave, currently playing both in theaters and on demand, is the kind of movie that will generate almost all of its long-term business from its ending. Yes, it will be nominated for, and perhaps win, a whole shitload of Oscars. And yes, DOP Stephane Fontaine’s camerawork deserves one of those Oscars. If you want two hours of sumptuous Vatican porn (and the mood strikes me more often than you’d imagine), Fontaine and director Edward Berger deliver a movie with multiple frames that are literally suitable for framing. Put those shots in a fucking museum.
But that ain’t what anyone’s gonna talk about coming out of the theater. What everyone is gonna talk about is, “Oh wow, can you believe that ending?” And if you haven’t seen it Conclave yet, you’ll be besieged by satisfied customers encouraging you to experience its endgame for yourself. We’re still in the Spoiler Zone for this film, so I can’t and won't talk more about how Conclave’s plot resolves itself. Nor do I want to, because my opinion—and it’s only mine—is that it was corny and stupid.
When I sit down to watch me some Vatican porn, I want Vatican INTRIGUE. Conclave promises this in great quantity. The Pope has died. The eternally awesome Ralph Fiennes plays a humble British Cardinal tasked with overseeing the process of picking that pope's replacement, and it’s here in the first half of Conclave where the movie delivers. Fiennes quickly finds himself hopelessly ensnared in the politics of the Catholic Church, with all of the top New Pope choices going the full Belichick to undercut one another in order to claim the big Pope hat. We got Stanley Tucci repping the progressives. We got Lucian Msamati repping the African Cardinals. We got Sergio Castellito as head of the Italian Cardinal mob, stumping to take back the pontificate both for Italy and for the conservative branch of the faith. We have John Lithgow here on behalf whatever the Vatican’s equivalent of establishment Democrats is. We have Fiennes himself pushed out as a candidate, at least a little bit against his will; he refuses the job about as convincingly as Jon Stewart anytime someone asks him to run for office. And there is also Carlos Diehz, who plays a surprise attendee—he is the (secretly appointed) Cardinal of Kabul, by way of Mexico—and who may or may not be a complete fucking fraud.
Those are your players, and this is the kind of church drama I’ll always sign up for: one that depicts the church’s inner workings, rightly, as more or less an organized crime story. Does one of the Cardinals have a secret baby? Brothers and sisters, you know he does. Naughty boy! We’ve also got vague accusations of wrongdoing that, this being the Catholic Church, aren’t so vague if you follow the news at all. And we’ve got over a half dozens of the best actors in the world—Castellito, leering like a famished wolf, is the most wildly entertaining of them all—all ready to cut each other down with those secrets to get what they want. Despite the PG rating, I was ready for blood.
I got no blood. I did get to watch the inner processes of the conclave ritual, and I also love any movie that goes deep on how the sausage of the world is made. I also got some of the most beautiful shot composition I’ve ever seen, and I got the most tasteful interpretation of the Inception BRAHM chiming in every so often to remind me of the stakes involved. But when Conclave needed to turn ruthless, it went in the opposite direction. By the end, the movie all but telegraphs not only who will win the papacy, but why. It got to the point where I was so assured of the winner that I figured Berger would throw in a final curveball to keep the story from being so predictable, not to mention unrealistic.
Well, Berger threw me a curve all right. If you’re my age, that curveball will remind you of another twist-dependent, Oscar-approved movie, one from the 1990s. That’s all the detail I’m willing to provide here. That particular '90s movie would have been great even without its infamous fakeout. With Conclave, I felt like the fakeout only cheapened a movie that had already ditched the suspense of backchannel maneuvering for a West Wing-ification of the Catholic fucking Church.
I was surprised by the ending of Conclave, but it was a surprise akin to the Chiefs winning a game on a blocked field goal. An “oh for fuck’s sake” surprise. This may have been a byproduct of watching the film at home, and not inside a packed theater of patrons all gasping and tittering in unison. But I’m more than willing to bet that if I had seen the movie the latter way, it still would have left a growing, sour taste in my mouth.
This is because Berger and screenwriter Peter Straughan (working from a novel by Robert Harris) allow their own politics, rather than the Church’s, take over the story of Conclave. Morals win out over storytelling, and the end twist only reinforces that moralism, and to an obnoxious degree. Both men assuredly have their hearts in the right place, but I don’t watch a movie like Conclave for heart. Why would I expect the Vatican to have one of those?
