By the time the general public has had a chance to see “Conclave”—something many likely will do, given the movie’s probable prominence at Oscar time—the conversation will be about the ending. Which is, I am sad to say, clever. It sends a message, as any story about a papal election would be destined to do. It is not an ungenerous conclusion, by any means. But whether it is the kind of zinger worthy of a film that is magisterial when it isn’t simply being brilliant is a question. And not the only one.
The pope is dead. This is what Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) learns at the outset of this adaptation of the book by Robert Harris, who has a fondness for one-word titles (Fatherland, Enigma, Pompeii, Archangel) and a novelist’s regard for actual history. This makes for a good fit with the director Edward Berger, whose 2022 version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” also overshot when it might have been sober, though “sober” is certainly the word for Thomas: As the dean of the College of Cardinals—a job he’s tried and failed to quit—he finds his grim self in a situation that almost everyone around him knew was coming. The Holy Father had been failing, his closest confidantes have been scheming, and Thomas discovers—even as the steel shutters clang down on the Sistine Chapel, the phones are left in a hasty pile and all media are banned from the sequestered college—that the pontiff may be controlling the election from beyond the grave.
The portrait Mr. Berger creates of the Vatican at the time of a conclave is of a twilit world, worldly with men’s ambitions and weighty with papal history—and the architectural profundity of Rome, as well as the solemnity of ancient rites. (The cinematography is by Stéphane Fontaine; “A Prophet” and “Jackie” are among his painterly work.) As Thomas is assisted with his vestments, they seem to possess their own inescapable gravity; the framing of characters can suggest anyone from Caravaggio to Marc Chagall (both of whom have works among the Vatican’s treasures), and the assortment of still-life compositions that decorate “Conclave” suggest either repose or volatility, more often the latter. It is cinema of the first rank.
The storytelling, with a screenplay by the gifted Peter Straughan (“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “Frank”), involves the jockeying for position among cardinals with agendas. The most eager for election are the most despised among their colleagues. Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is a bombastic right-winger who complains that there hasn’t been an Italian pope in 40 years (which confirms one’s suspicions that the unnamed deceased is modeled after Pope Francis) and views the church’s conflict with Islam as a war. Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), an improbably American favorite in the race, is the Francis-like liberal, whom Thomas would prefer to win, until he gets some votes himself. Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) is an oily schemer but was also one of the dead pope’s closest confidantes. And Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), the African hard-liner who is to the right even of Tedesco, is poised to become Rome’s first certifiably Black pope. (Any resemblance to Cardinal Francis Arinze is probably libelous.) Thomas, who pleads that he is objective, is anything but.
The wild card in all this clerical chicanery is the saintly Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), who arrives in Vatican City with the claim that the late pope had secretly made him archbishop of Kabul. The secrecy was prompted by the dangerous nature of Benitez’s various posts—in the Congo, Baghdad and Afghanistan—and his claim is confirmed. He is a terrific invention by Mr. Harris, though one that disrupts the chemistry of “Conclave,” which is most engaging while exploring the denials of ambition among very ambitious men. “Conclave” had me thinking of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” with its cast of memorable character actors playing all those dimly remembered political performers. The age of the cast—and our memories of them younger—punctuates the fact that so much power is in such old hands. Think about that at election time.
Mr. Fiennes seems destined for nominations this awards season, as does Mr. Tucci, Mr. Berger and the movie itself. One delightful counteragent to the overload of testosterone is Isabella Rossellini, who, as Sister Agnes, quietly directs the care of the assembled cardinals. But she does have one moment when she delivers a withering indictment of certain men, before a crowd of other men, and then curtsies before exiting the chamber. The audience I was with laughed out loud. But it was clear from the opening credits that the crowd knew its church.
