Conclave (2024) Review

 rating: *****

the story: A new pope is elected amidst desperate maneuvering between cardinals.

the review: It was only a couple days ago that I finally figured out the ending, and as such unlocked the whole movie, and now I'm quite happy to report my love for Conclave.

As a Catholic, it's always nice to see, in recent decades, any film that breaks through the mainstream tackling Catholic matters.  Conclave was a modest success in theaters, but more importantly critics actually liked it, and have been including it among the best movies of 2024.  I suspect for a lot of them understanding the movie takes a backseat to the spectacle, up to and including that ending, and for many Catholics the ending only fuels a controversy.  Catholics will assume Conclave makes a mockery of the faith, and critics will assume it's all good fun and high theater.  It's a bit deeper than that.

It helps to hang all this on the sturdy shoulders of Ralph Fiennes, playing the cardinal tasked with running the election process, and therefore finding himself in the middle of seemingly endless intrigue, from John Lithgow's cardinal who ends up positively Machiavellian to Stanley Tucci's cardinal, who sees himself as the vanguard against backward traditionalism.  The fourth name actor in the ensemble is Isabella Rossellini as the nun tasked with keeping the proceedings running on a practical level, but who also finds herself unable to ignore the drama unfolding around her.

My original reaction to Conclave was that it was a wonderful reflection of the post-John Paul II papacy, the inability to escape his considerable shadow.  On that score it still works nicely.  Mostly, though, the whole thing is a metaphor about the massive tangle of politics our age seems thoroughly incapable of escaping, and the ending a direct reflection of its consequences.  

To be more specific, the ending, in which the newly elected pope stands revealed as having by far the biggest scandal just waiting to be exposed and yet having seemed like the best possible candidate after everyone else was eliminated from contention...In the rush to disqualify each other, the cardinals didn't stop to consider what they were losing in the process, and what they get as a result.

I can't think of a much more relevant story for these times.