It’s a pity Adrien Brody beat Ralph Fiennes to the Oscar. While Brody’s brooding presence in The Brutalist goes a long way in irradiating the aridity of the film, what Ralph Fiennes does in Conclave is something far more momentous. In this discourse on papal politics, Fiennes plays Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, a candidate for popehood after the Pope passes away, leaving the question of his successor in a conundrum.
While the skirmish for succession is no different from what happens when a chief minister of an Indian state passes away, the focus here is on sifting through the layers of protocol to come to the rather sobering conclusion: the rites of religion are as transmogrifying as politics. There are no unbreakable moral and ethical rules in either activity.
Director Edward Berger has earlier directed films in German. Conclave is his first English-language film. But be warned: about twenty percent of the film is in Latin, the language of the Catholic religion. While such linguistic scrupulosity lends an aura of immovable authenticity to the proceedings, it also assists the narrative in being what it strives to be: an immersive drama of electorally chosen supremacy.
The dramatic conflicts come in welters of mystery in the Agatha Christie mould. One candidate for popehood is called by the dying pope to his deathbed, where they have a heated argument. Another candidate, an African priest, Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), is disgraced when a woman who had a relationship with him in the past shows up hours before the election of the new pope.
More than anything else, Conclave reveals the priests as humans thrust with the responsibility of divinity, sometimes reluctantly. My favourite moment in this seamlessly stitched stretch of cinema is when Thomas Lawrence burst out in anguish saying he has no ambition of being a pope. Ralph Fiennes’ performance is a force of Nature.
Even the most dramatic episodes are handled with utmost restraint. There is a kind of awed hush shrouding the entire narration. We can almost hear the heartbeats of the expectant candidates to be the new Pope. After a point, it matters little who is elected for the job. What we feel is the heat and tension of a job that wants the candidate to be impeccable within the universal moral bandwidth. To err may be human, but it doesn’t apply to the Pope.
Conclave is shot like a piece of art by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine. Each frame radiates a divine light. Every actor is born for the job. There are hardly any women characters in the film, making this one of the most vital onscreen Vatican City since Man invented religion.
