Review: Conclave
Carlo Maria Viganò will never recover from being portrayed as a guy who vapes in the Vatican.
In the wake of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young/New Pope, there’s been ample room for more political dramas about the Holy See. Conclave takes the route of the paranoid thriller, treating St. Peter’s Basilica as the Washington of All the President’s Men or the London of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (and indeed, TTSS co-writer Peter Straughan scripted this). Conclave is low on original insights into the Catholic Church, but when the results are this much fun, that’s an easy shortcoming to forgive.
Conclave makes for a fun two hours of intrigue and deliciously Catholic doubt, rife with allusions to the Vatican Leaks, John Paul II and Benedict XVI’s neglect of clerical abuse victims, and the fascism of Piuses XI and XII. My friend Shea Vassar has described it as Mean Girls in the Vatican, and if that appeals to you, this is probably your movie. Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Lucian Msamati, and Isabella Rossellini make the already solid script absolutely sing. Fiennes’ character Lawrence articulates the role doubt has in faith, both explaining an important part of belief and comforting himself for his uncertainty about the Papacy. Like most good paranoid thrillers, Conclave is a story about political power where the greatest institution is rudderless, struggling under the weight of an empty throne, a sede vacante. In a post-Benedict XVI world, it’s not exactly a new insight, but it’s visually poignant and well-visualized by director Edward Berger.
The ending left me slightly cold — “what if we just got a nice Pope?” is a weak response to the ongoing plutocracy and colonialism of the Catholic Church. But seeing a movie about the Vatican take on the damage caused by Humanae Vitae and traditionalist Catholicism was healing for me, and it seemed to be fun for everyone else. If Conclave is what we get instead of The Young Pope Season 3, stories about the Vatican are in good shape.
