Conclave

Five reasons why Edward Berger's papal drama is the best film you'll see this year

I didn’t expect to be writing this, but I saw Edward Berger’s new film Conclave the other night and it’s been burning a hole in my brain ever since.

Dean Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) looking anguished

The plot in a nutshell: the Pope dies suddenly - well, as suddenly as a man pushing 80 can - and a conclave of cardinals is assembled to select his successor. In the ensuing unholy scramble, Dean Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) needs to manage proceedings, egos and his own pesky conscience.

If you haven’t seen it, here’s five reasons why you should sack off everything in your diary - including your kid’s nativity if that’s the only available time slot - and head to the cinema pronto.

1. The cast. What a cast. Stanley Tucci is perfection as bespectacled all-talk-no-trousers liberal Bellini, and Sergio Castellitto is compelling (and kinda…fanciable?) as wide boy Tedesco, his conservative foil.

Social media is obsessed with Tedesco’s vape, and rightly so

Special mention to John Lithgow (Tremblay) for nailing slightly-camp-outraged-pomposity, and to Isabella Rossellini, who delivers what the Guardian calls “the most passive aggressive curtsey in cinema history” as Sphinx-like Sister Agnes. It’d be *so* easy to take a swipe at the Catholic church by presenting these characters as simple villains or saints, but instead they’re properly nuanced: holy and flawed and messy and credible. We love to see it.

2. The cinematography. The framing, lighting, movement and COLOUR - those pops of cardinal red against ancient stone and gloomy rooms - are balm for Christmas-weary eyes. Berger makes stunning portraiture out of the mundane: a robed cardinal checking his iPhone; a pile of discarded fag ends. Fine schtuff.

A - radiance? host? vatican? - of cardinals

3. The dialogue. So many bitch-slaps of lines. From the lol-worthy (Bellini’s “I could never become Pope in those circumstances. A stolen document, the smearing of a brother cardinal. I'd be the Richard Nixon of Popes”) to the tear-jerky (Lawrence telling Cardinal Adeyemi that he’s out of the running: “You must begin again. But you are a good man. I know you to be a good man, and you will find a way to atone.”) and Cardinal Benitez’s spinetingling “The church is not the past. It is what we do next” (paging all world religions! adopt this as a guiding principle right this instant!).

   Then there’s Lawrence’s stirring warning against being too certain which has gone a bit viral and can be applied to loads of stuff outside religion: “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts. And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness and who carries on.” Talk about a mic drop.

4. The melodrama. I mean, much of Catholicism the concept of a conclave is melodramatic, right? The sealed death room, the oaths of secrecy, the Liberace costuming, all that Latin? No wonder it gets so many of us hot under the (secular) collar. In storytelling terms, a conclave is a perfect environment - physical claustrophobia! stifling traditions! fraternity! rivalry! intrigue! suspicion! sin, sin and more sin!

Also, shoutout to Conclave for reigniting memories of my one and only visit to Rome: the man employed solely to say ‘Sssssh!” over a microphone in the Sistine Chapel, the tourist who announced “Jeez, if they sold just one of these painting they could air-condition the whole place!"; the mummified body of Blessed John XXIII!

3. Memes for days. “It’s like RuPaul’s Drag Race!” I hissed in the cinema as yet another contender for the papal throne engaged in Machiavellian dealings/was revealed as a wrong ‘un/got read to filth.

   Turns out that wasn’t an original thought. Whatever your guilty televisual pleasure - Mean Girls, Real Housewives of Beverley Hills, or my beloved Drag Race - chances are that the Very Online have created a Conclave meme.

Run, don’t walk - Conclave is an absolute banger. Best film I’ve seen in yonks.

Thanks for reading. Back in January x

---

Reading:

Still on All Fours by Miranda July, who has graced Substack with her presence. Feel like I’m going to need a mega debrief after I’ve finished so please let me know if you’re on with it, fanks.

Watching:

Conclave, obviously, and interminable school Christmas carol concerts/nativities/interpretative dance shows.

Listening to:

This Radio 4 special presented by Sean O’Hagan is a reflection on Shane MacGowan - poet and punk, romantic and rebel - as the voice of the Irish diaspora explored through six key songs. Shane died a year ago, and this is a lovely seasonal listen.

Young Shane

---

I’m Laura McDonagh and I’m a second-generation Irish writer from the north-east of England.

I love writing about writing (go figure), cultural identity, grief, being Irish in Britain, the 90s (💖) and more.

Subscribe to my Substack ‘Guess what? Me’ and I will love you forever IDEMT.xxx