CONCLAVE - THE SECRET & THE SACRED

Conclave is the perfect Soul Telegram film, so we decided that both of us would write about it for this issue. We’d love to discuss it with you in the comments.

Gareth Higgins on CONCLAVE

Conclave is a slightly camp film about a place that might take itself too seriously, and a serious film about a very camp place - but it’s so good that I intend both of those assertions as a compliment.

Based on the ecclesiastical thriller by Robert Harris, whose novels take a journalistic dive into historical power games (and often courage), the film adaptation directed by Edward Berger is a mysterious, meaty feast. A movie with much to say to the current moment, Conclave is notionally about the internal power structures of the Vatican as the death of a pope is followed by a competition for succession. The portrayal of cardinals being convened from around the world, facilitated by a guy with more than decent managerial skills (Ralph Fiennes, never better, amid a universally brilliant ensemble - John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, Lucian Msamati, Sergio Castellitto, Brian F. O’Byrne and Carlos Diehz), and multiple rounds of voting til the Holy Spirit’s mind has been discerned seems utterly credible. The novelistic attention to detail is a real pleasure: cardinals’ cells that seem both stately and austere (marble walls though not exactly comfort); a wax seal on the late pontiff’s door; everybody not only wearing the same robes but carrying matching umbrellas. There’s a palpable sense of the conclave being a walled village within a walled state within a theme park of a city. The cardinals are simultaneously among the most powerful people in the world, and trapped.