Conclave Review

Panic! at the Vatican

QUICK FYI: I will be doing a piece this weekend with

Gabriel Frieberg

on Conclave, so I just wanted to throw down some quick thoughts on it! I highly recommend checking out his review and the combined piece when that drops, as he does excellent work and covers everything related to movies and TV!

Guys, I have a confession to make. I am obsessed with catholic films, good and bad! I eat these all up from masterpieces that explore faith, like Martin Scorsese's Silence or Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, to trashy thrillers like The DaVinci Code trilogy starring Tom Hanks. From awards darlings like The Two Popes to schlocky horror like The Pope's Exorcist, I can't help but be smitten by them all for different reasons. Edward Berger's Conclave falls into the semi-prestigious category for me. It is a wildly entertaining but messy procedural thriller, elevated by its excellent performances and fine direction. Ralph Fiennes is superb as ever, beaming with intelligence, doubt, and conviction. It smacks your knuckles with a ruler when it comes to the blatantly obvious metaphor for American elections and politics, but as we all know, subtly is for cowards.

Conclave is a delightful popcorn movie centered around electing the next pope and the interworking drama between different church factions. Thanks to the veteran performances by the all-star cast, I even found myself moved by several scenes. The examination of the church's place today, man's ambition and corruption, and doubting one's faith are all there, if never cutting deep enough for me. This is just a personal preference, but I can't stand the clean digital look of the film. It looks like cement. What happened to contrast?! The framing of scenes and angles are all great, and it can feel like a Renaissance painting at times, but why is it so gray and washed out?! That, combined with its repetitive score that also carries over from Berger's work on his award-winning remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, I am starting to see annoying similar patterns with who I think is a director with extraordinary abilities. A boring visual style shouldn’t ruin several impressive staging and visual storytelling scenes.

I would take a dozen Conclave's a year if I could. This feels harkened back to the 90s when these wild, dramatic thrillers go off the rails with prestigious performances that take us to new heights. I can't say that it's thematic, on-the-nose telling of the story ultimately worked for me as it did feel relatively surface level at times, but uncovering the mystery and seeing these men in robes in shady back rooms try to crawl their way to the top of Rome was so fun I highly recommend seeing this in a crowded theater. Silly plot twists aside, please check it out, and peace be with you!

Final Score: 8/10

Written by Kevin J. Pettit