Conclave

Or: You Dark Horse You

Is there a more melancholy face than Ralph Fiennes? Through he’s made his name playing explosive wizards, nazis, and nazi wizards, his real talent as an actor ought to be Man In Quandary. The closeups on expressionless face still show the fire of anxiety blazing its way through his mind. Never before has one so succinctly captures the dueling desires of doing the right thing and packing up his ball and going home.

Sadly the latter is not an option for his latest character Cardinal-Dean Thomas Lawrence, organizer of the latest Vatican conclave. The previous pope, Thomas’s mentor and recent thorn, has died under totally unsuspicious circumstances leaving him to gather together the world’s cardinals and elect one of their number to the papacy, from the slick Trembly (John Lithgow), jovial Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), liberal but weak-willed Bellini (Stanley Tucci), Benitez (Carlos Diehz) entirely too optimistic and christlike for the nest of vipers, to Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) with his reactionary politics, poorly disguised racism, and vape pen.

It’s that last little touch that gives Conclave it’s particular edge. The majesty of the chaotic church, its near two thousand years of tradition, its architecture and ritual command attention like a slap to the face. Yet in between the marble halls and leering devils and wax seals modernity keeps nosing in: a folding gurney, mechanized shutters plunging the Vatican into metaphoric and literal shadow, to an elderly Cardinal pecking at a smart phone in a case the same crimson as his vestments.

Conclave is not shy for leaning on its metaphors, the almighty might just be behind the camera chucking stones at the proceedings. There is a kind of toothsome irony at how wrong the princes of the church can grasp the insights of each other: multiple allies and enemies of Thomas give him the same “Your ambition is showing and it’s not a cute fit” speech, while we are all to aware that the holy see is the last possible place Thomas wants to go. The only real resonant soul unhand is Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) head of the catering nuns, who is also possessed of an extremely lively melancholy, though she has to put much more steel in her spine that Thomas, and is lamentably given less screen time.

As Fiennes slinks and weeps and wrestles with his conscious with faith we are reminded again and again that the Catholic Church is an institution, and one whose ranks are compiled of fallible humans. It does not shy away from the church’s failings past present or ongoing, but never condemns it. There is still a chance, G-d seems to be whispering, to Thomas and to us, to use faith for good and believe in innocence however hard it might be to find.