Director
Edward Berger
Edward Berger
Cast
Ralph Fiennes - Cardinal Thomas Lawrence
Stanley Tucci - Cardinal Aldo Bellini
John Lithgow - Cardinal Joseph Tremblay
Isabella Rossellini - Sr. Agnes
Sergio Castellitto -Cardinal Goffredo TedescoLucian Msamati - Cardinal Joshua Adeyemi
Carlos Diehz - Cardinal Vincent Benitez
The Catholic Church holds papal conclaves, which take place in complete secrecy, upon the death of a pope.
The College of Cardinals gather at the Vatican to elect a successor of St. Peter by voting for the Cardinal they think will be an ideal fit for the papacy. During the process, they're secluded and not permitted to have contact with the outside world.
When watching "Conclave" I anticipated a political thriller centering on the secret process along with the politics, turmoil, challenges, corruption, and the general workings that surely take place during these conclaves. And all of the above are there in the movie. All in all, I found this movie not only intriguing and well made, but also frustrating, grating and pitiful.
"Conclave" is based on Robert Harris's book of the same name. Since this is a movie involving the Catholic Church, and I happen to be a practicing Catholic, the story lit a fire under me. So, I have to make specific points at the risk of sounding preachy. Though I may be a bit prejudice, I do want to be fair...and completely correct, which of course I am. Also, spoilers!
The movie begins with the death of the pope, whose name isn't mentioned in the film.
Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) from England is the Dean of the College of Cardinals and heads the conclave now called to elect a new pope.
There are four cardinals in particular who are primary potentials to be elected. One is Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), an Italian cardinal who is very traditional minded. He wants to see the Catholic Church return to saying the Traditional Latin Mass, often called the Tridentine Mass, which was the mass said in all Roman churches throughout the centuries until Pope Paul VI's new liturgy introduced in the late 1960s. He also wants to see Latin used on a wide scale within the Roman Church for the sake of unification.
However, Cardinal Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci) from the U.S. is much more progressive and liberal. He wants the Church to continue on the progressive path the previous pope was leading the Church on.
Cardinal Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a Nigerian Cardinal, is a social conservative. And Cardinal Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow) of Canada is considered a moderate, but he's got issues.
Cardinal Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a Nigerian Cardinal, is a social conservative. And Cardinal Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow) of Canada is considered a moderate, but he's got issues.
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Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence. |
As the Cardinals start arriving at the Vatican and prepare to go into hiding, Lawrence receives all kinds of informative tidbits from advisors.
He's told the pope had recently demanded Trembley to resign. Of course, when Lawrence confronts Trembley about this, he denies it.
After all the cardinals arrive and are accounted for, a cardinal named Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz) arrives late, and very unexpectedly. In fact, none of the other cardinals know who he is.
Evidently, he was the Archbishop of Kabul until the pope made him a cardinal in a manner the Church calls, "In pectore" which means done in secret.
Lawrence confirms his legitimacy and allows Benitez to take part in the conclave. He has no reason not to include him.
The electoral process is not without its tumultuous moments and pressures felt all around the College of Cardinals.
In one scene, Lawrence witnesses a heated moment between Adeyemi and a nun named Sr. Shanumi (Balkissa Maiga) who had been transferred to Rome from Nigeria.
It turns out the Cardinal and Sr. Shanumi had a sinful relationship several years ago, I think before he was a cardinal, which led to the birth of a child.
Also, Trembley is found to have committed the sin of simony as he paid other cardinals for their votes. Not only that, but he also arranged for Sr. Shanumi's transfer to Rome as an obstacle to Adeyemi's potential election, which Trembley claims he had done under the late Holy Father's request.
Lawrence and Bellini have a heated discussion about the direction the Church needs to go or, rather where Bellini thinks it needs to go. For that to happen, again Bellini thinks Tedesco must not be elected.
Bellini and Lawrence later reconcile, and Lawrence agrees to back Bellini in stopping Tedesco from obtaining the papacy.
After multiple ballots over several days, the cardinals finally elect a pope. And the new pope carries a secret that is a first for the papacy in all of Church history.
The parts of this movie I like, I like. The parts I hate, I really, really hate.
"Conclave" has some beautiful cinematography and gorgeous composition. The scenes are brilliantly shot, and that's mixed with amazing acting from brilliant actors. That much, I really like. I also think the depictions of what the political strife among the different factions within the hierarchy (the traditionalist versus the progressives) must look like, especially during a papal conclave are pretty accurate. It's no secret the hierarchy of the Church is stained with scandals, unfortunately.
Both political sides want to take the wheel of the Church in completely opposite directions.
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Sergio Castellitto as Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco. |
In one scene, Tedesco talks to Lawrence during dinner and comments that around the time of Pope John XXIII, who reigned from 1958 to 1963, and especially before his papacy, when the Church still said the Latin Mass which is now commonly referred to as the traditional Latin Mass, the College of Cardinals were much more unified. They spoke to each other in Latin so they could understand each other. Latin is a unifying language, after all. Of course, Latin went by the wayside in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, and the Latin Mass was largely replaced around the world with the Novus Ordo liturgy said in the vernacular.
"Without the tradition of Rome, things fall apart," Tedesco says.
He points out how the Church isn't so unified now thanks to the abandonment of tradition. Now, as he says to Lawrence, the Cardinals are all isolated and only speak with those who speak their native language. The story makes a valid point through Tedesco.
Bellini, being progressive, is gung-ho about the modern liberation theology that plagues the minds of too many church leaders. These left-wing ideas of his have emptied pews, poisoned the faithful, and killed vocations especially since the Second Vatican Council.
He wants to continue the destruction of barriers the previous pope tried tearing down, insisting that all religions lead to God.
Bellini goes to Lawrence to persuade him to forget tradition and steer the Church along the progressive route. And he'll say whatever needs to be said to make that happen. It's not Tedesco he dislikes; it's tradition. It's the 2000-year-old history of the Church he wants to stop. This mirrors the current crisis in the Catholic Church so well.
"If we liberals are not united, Tedesco will become Pope. You have no idea how bad it became, Thomas. The way he and his circle attacked the Holy Father towards the end - the smears, the leaks to the press - it was savage. He fought him every single day of his pontificate, and now that he's dead, he wants to destroy his life's work. If Tedesco becomes Pope, he will undo sixty years of progress," Bellini says.
"You talk as if you are the only alternative, but Adeyemi has the wind behind him," Lawrence replies.
"Adeyemi? Adeyemi, the man who believes that homosexuals should be sent to prison in this world and Hell in the next? Adeyemi's not the answer to anything, and you know it. If you want to defeat...."
"Defeat? This is a conclave, Aldo. It's not a war," Lawrence says.
"It is a war, and you have to commit to a side."
"You talk as if you are the only alternative, but Adeyemi has the wind behind him," Lawrence replies.
"Adeyemi? Adeyemi, the man who believes that homosexuals should be sent to prison in this world and Hell in the next? Adeyemi's not the answer to anything, and you know it. If you want to defeat...."
"Defeat? This is a conclave, Aldo. It's not a war," Lawrence says.
"It is a war, and you have to commit to a side."
Like too many cardinals and bishops, Bellini forgets that sodomy is one of the four deadly sins that cry to Heaven for vengeance. And "60 years of progress" - the "progress" that has emptied Churches, tossed out Church doctrine, and spread confusion, confusion, and confusion among Catholics - should not nor cannot replace 2000 years of Church history and tradition. The Church doesn't change because Christ cannot change.
Tedesco is the potential successor who's against the progressive ideas plaguing the Church. He wants a return to tradition. He wants the traditional Latin Mass to be restored and embraced once again.
So, he's the big ol' bad guy in the story. And, of course, the movie resist portraying him as a racist on top of being "outdated." Being labeled "racist" is the dirtiest thing a left-wing progressive ideologue can label their enemy. "Racist" with a capital 'R.' That's when the story began to feel like propaganda. Hollywood despises the Church specifically, and Christianity in general. It's no surprise Hollywood producers would make a movie to proselytize what teachings they arrogantly think the Catholic Church needs to recant, and what ideas of theirs the Church needs to embrace. I wouldn't expect Hollywood writers to know anything about the Catholic Church nor its history prior to yesterday, nor be bothered to do any sort of research.
As Pope St. Pius X said in his encyclical, "Notre Charge Apostolique," "The true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators, but traditionalists."
The Church has had leaders unfortunately involved in scandalous behavior as far back as Judas Iscariot betraying Jesus for money, and St. Peter, the first Pope, denying our Lord three times. As Hilaire Belloc once adequately observed, “The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine – but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”
Once the idea of returning to tradition is spit upon, the movie gets worse. Where the movie takes that plot point regarding corruption and claims what the resolution ought to be is where the movie completely loses me.
Benitez, who's portrayed as a wise and humble prelate among all the other cardinals, admonishes the other cardinals for being so involved in fighting. He tosses out some empty platitudes about how we all have to be kind and nice to everyone, and that'll solve everything. And as if the cardinals have never heard that before, they elect Benitez, who takes the name Innocent.
Earlier, Lawrence's assistant and opposition researcher, Msgr. Raymond O'Malley (Brían F. O'Byrne) tells him that the pope had paid for Benitez to travel to Geneva for a medical appointment of some kind that ended up getting cancelled.
After his election, Benitez tells Lawrence that he was born a male but with both a uterus and ovaries. He didn't know he was a hermaphrodite until he underwent an appendectomy. That appointment in Geneve was for a laparoscopic hysterectomy to remove his uterus. However, Benitez decided not to go through with it because, as he says, it's the way God made him. It's certainly a unique situation, and Lawrence allows the new pope to ascend the chair of St. Peter.
Granted, it's not Cardinal Benitez's fault, of course. Thanks to original sin, nature is corrupted and can fail. So, these types of deformations happen. Being a hermaphrodite is treated as being a part of the transgender movement. Transgender activists make it a part of their cause as a means to justify the delusion that a person can actually change their sex. They'll claim a person's sex isn't determined by their body parts but will then chop off body parts, or construct body parts, to make them male or female. And then they'll point to hermaphrodites to somehow "prove" that people can change their sex.
Using a rare deformity as some form of proof doesn't do their cause justice. Regardless, this plot point about Benitez plays into this notion. And because of that, this twist in the story gives the impression that the movie is claiming the Church needs a transgender pope to bring the Church...where? Only a transgender can make the Church acceptable.
The movie left me with the notion that Catholics who adhere to true Catholic teachings, traditions, and morals are outdated and evil.
The movie certainly isn't insinuating nor even hinting that what the Catholic Church needs is a truly Catholic Pope who has the faith and will work to restore all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:10).
"Instaurare Omnia in Christo" (To restore all things in Christ) was the motto of St. Pius X, the predecessor of Pope Leo XIII who already saw corruption infiltrating the Church during his papacy between 1878 to 1903. However, the hierarchy has leaned farther and farther from that mindset to the point where the first commandment is ignored, Christ's words about Himself in St. John 14:6 is disregarded, and the idea that "all religions lead to God" is haphazardly preached by Catholic clergy. Two contradictory things can't be right at the same time.
This movie starts well, but ends up being another preach-fest of emotionally driven far-left non-sense that means absolutely nothing when you get down to it.
"Conclave" concludes with the premise of how terrible, awful, and bad the Catholic Church is for not embracing current ideologies. What was it Christ said about being a sign of contradiction? The frustrating part, aside from this, is that the movie was marketed as being a story about the mysteries surrounding the paper conclave as seen in the trailers.
The movie uses the beauty of Catholicism to snag audiences' attention and make them watch as Catholicism is smacked around by left-wing producers who believe Catholicism is an acceptable prejudice, and worthy of disdain. Audiences are left with the notion that the Church needs a dude with a uterus to guide and save it. It's just another channel for this tired progressive screed. Who needs it?
Generally put, the movie wants me to think that for the Catholic Church to ever hope to be great is by embracing progressive leftist ideologies. "Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." (Isaiah 5:20). Woe, indeed!
"Conclave" starts off well, but crashes good and hard by the end. It's painfully frustrating to sit through a sermon from Hollywood about how evil, and bad, and evil some more, the 2000-year-old Catholic Church is for not believing what Hollywood elites demand everyone believe.