While Conclave is a sumptuously produced, and superbly acted film, its conception of Catholic politics, and so its drama, are much less successful, argues Kevin Ovenden

Is it possible for a film taken as a whole to be less than the sum of its parts? I think so, after watching the extremely well-made Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris. The thriller is situated in a papal conclave, that is the gathering of cardinals of the Catholic church to elect a new pope following the death, or in unusual circumstances, abdication, of the previous one.

Just such an unusual circumstance took place in 2013 with the renunciation of the papacy by Pope Benedict XVI. His own election following the death of John Paul II in 2005 was widely seen as a victory for the conservative wing of the church against liberals and modernisers.

His successor in turn, Jorge Mario Bergoglio from Argentina, was the first pope from outside Europe since the eighth century. Now Pope Francis, he is regarded, especially and with considerable antagonism by conservatives, as a liberal. His coming from the ‘global south’ also focused attention on the future of a church which is declining in Europe.

Harris’s novel grappled with these issues to produce a dramatic and insightful story about politics, power, faith and the workings of institutions. Eight years on, and it’s hard to say the same of the film, despite its positives.

The acting by the principals is superbly understated and effective. Ralph Fiennes is brilliant as the world-weary Cardinal Lawrence experiencing a very English crisis of faith as he is called upon to convene the gathering to select the new pope, a process that is simultaneously driven by profane politics and, for the faithful, divine spirit.

There are other great performances, and no bad ones. Stanley Tucci as the American liberal standard bearer for the pontificate admirably conveys the interpenetration of progressive principle and Machiavellian plotting. Isabella Rossellini reminds you what a stunning actor she is, stealing everything on the set except the cameras.

The cinematography is the star of the show. Though some of the lingering metaphorical imagery is a bit caked on. Yes – I get that various cardinals smoke and it is meant to signify succumbing to worldly temptation, but does no one else male and in their sixties smoke in the world of this movie? Are our cues to be that obvious?

Drama and politics

There is some dramatic tension, but chances to develop it are passed over. That makes intrusions such as a literal explosion from outside the Sistine Chapel being felt by those within all the more jarring.

I think the lack of drama, partially compensated for by voluptuous ecclesiastical ritual and robes, comes down to two related problems. The politics of the factions within the church – a necessarily political, global religious institution – are weakly depicted. It is as if the complex recent history, with the conclaves of 2005 and then 2013, are flattened out into one dimension. A very different film, The Two Popes (2019) covering the transition from Benedict to Francis, does a better job at bringing the contesting elements to life.

Similarly, the theology giving rise to or at least appealed to by the contending political forces and how they are structured is poorly conveyed in this film. Here, it tells us little that the film has apparently upset many leading Catholic figures. So did the Dan Brown film Inferno or before that The Da Vinci Code. It didn’t make either of them any good. In fact they are ludicrously awful.

The problem in Conclave is not fantastical plot lines but that the liberals and the conservatives who very much exist in a massive global institution are presented as cardboard cutouts, politically and doctrinally. The conservatives suffer this fate particularly. Their personification, an Italian cardinal, could come straight out of central casting or a scene from Father Ted. He sweeps in with an exaggerated cloak billowing as if in a Victorian melodrama, smoking chunky cigars and with the deportment and interactions of one of Don Corleone’s antagonists among the five families in the Godfather.

There is nothing that can be done intelligently with such a clownish character or dramatically with such a crude standpoint in a drama, which is supposed to convey, like any good drama, a clash of viewpoints, grand, historic, personal and human. Thus the dramatic tension only rests upon one side of what is built up as a world-historic clash over the direction of the Catholic Church and the 1.3 billion of its faithful. That is the side of the liberals.

Despite some great acting, they are not given much to work with either. They are seen to be cunning and ruthless. That is better than a fictitious liberal piety of unblemished virtue. But without the parallel consideration of the (cartoonish) conservatives, it is all a bit lacking in both character development and pathos. What is meant to convey great, historical clashes is reduced to the mechanisms of rather content-free office politics. Unsurprisingly, that is not that engaging. It might work as a comedy.

Liberalism past

I was not looking to this film for politics or profound insight into contemporary debates and latent schismatics in the Catholic church. It would be unfair to criticise it on those bases. It is fair to say, however, that in not bringing those realities vividly to life, instead relying on cliches, you end up with beautiful looking triviality. By only fleshing out a standard and limited set of eternal tropes with a story bulked out with sumptuous shots and location, it doesn’t do much beyond easy entertainment. To be fair – that is something.

There is an issue with the overall morality tale also. It may have fitted in a film a decade ago. Not now. It is that liberalism has its vices and its hypocrisies. But it is the only game in town. Conservatism is just stupid, rude and doomed due to objective progress. At its most intelligent – as Benedict handing over to Francis shows in The Two Popes – it is prepared to concede to the ineluctable progressive advance.

That conceit cannot hold now. The once dominant liberal-capitalist order and its expressions in all institutions, national and global, religious and secular, is in crisis. Reaction and conservatism cannot be so easily consigned to the past, unfortunately. The heart of reactionary opposition to Pope Francis today is not in Italy or among evangelicals in various African countries. It is most potent in the US.

A deus ex machina plot device emerges in the film to provide some hope for a resolution of these tensions via a progressive leap. Or perhaps a dea (feminine gender) or deum (neuter) ex machina. It’s an interesting metaphor, but it is all a bit forced and relying on the ‘hors texte’ – the context provided by a smug liberalism whose time has passed.

Nor is it some great plot twist. A Chekov’s gun refers to something early on in a drama that is placed there, forgotten and then referred back to when its importance becomes apparent. The Chekov’s gun in this film was not only placed on the table in the first scene but various people kept pointing to it from so many angles throughout as to tell you exactly what it and its purpose is well before the denouement, which is an anticlimax.

The background scheming on several sides is well conveyed. But it is hardly shocking in a world where we know of gigantic scandals linking the Catholic Church to the corruption of the capitalist world, from the Banco Ambrosiano criminality to the coverup of systemic abuse.

The reality, including the actual clerical clashes and politics of radical reform and reactionary conservative movements in the church, provides a much more dramatic thriller than a film that doesn’t do them justice.