CONCLAVE – the movie

(Warning: this is not a movie review but a personal response.  It will contain spoilers so do not read if in mind to watch Conclave)

“Unpersuasive” was the word used by a critic of Conclave. I back that.

The film presents much of the spectacle, intrigue and institutions within The Vatican when the election of a new Pope is called for.  As he will be, for a while at least, “the most important person in the world”, it is a subject worthy of the attention of those whose knowledge of the conclave goes as far as knowing the difference between the black and white smokes.  Were the film, however, merely to present the trappings of the election it would be a documentary – and such an event deserves more than that.

Or so the director, Edward Berger thinks.  Using Robert Harris’s novel of the same name, Berger presents a film of high and sustained tension. Opening with the death of the Holy See, a whiff of suspicion rises – his death is surprising – “I thought he’d outlive us all”.  The cardinal entrusted to manage the conclave, Thomas Lawrence, is (true to his name) doubting his faith and would have resigned had not the late Pope refused to accept it.  Among the likely successors the differences are confrontational: the liberal American cardinal who would accept women, same-sex unions and the modern idiom is angrily opposed to the brash and domineering Italian cardinal who would revert to ordered Catholicism, centred on its traditions and unchanging standards; the quiet and inoffensive black African cardinal bears an unstated conservatism which would entrench much of the same. Accentuating these tensions is the covert jockeying for the position with simony (a nice religious word for bribery) raising its ugly head.

Matters build to an explosive climax when Berger synchronises a suicide-bomber’s detonation in a nearby Vatican street with our hingepin, Thomas, dropping his ballot into the sacred receptacle.  Sistine windows shatter, chaos and dust envelop the red-and-white prelates who are herded away to an apparently safer space.

In the aftermath it is clear that force-to-be-met-with-force has no better champion than our Italian front-runner who would stop the rot which has led to these catastrophes.  Things seem to be going his way until a late entry, an unknown cardinal secretly appointed by the late pontiff on account of his working in areas where religious identities can be death, rises and addresses the frightened and confused ranks around him. He has the words to quieten their hearts, a face of shared suffering and a heart of empathy.  The cardinals have their man.

So far, so good.  But not for Berger. Too easy, too comfortable an ending – tension must be sustained at any cost.  And it is… . Cardinal Lawrence’s aide-cum-sleuth has, on Thomas’s instruction, discovered that the mystery cardinal had cancelled an appointment at a Swiss clinic which specialises in gender identities. So I did he says to Thomas. He was to have had an hysterectomy. He manifests both genders This new Pope was born infallibly correct!

“Unpersuasive”…a movie of high drama, fine acting and sustained tension fails – “unpersuasive”. When a film that has been built on foundations of deep and universal problems resolves these conflicts through an especial gender identity, it’s one massive anti-climax.

Thanks to Matt Bluejay of Unsplash for the image.