In the Flesh: Conclave

Take Paolo Sorrentino’s visionary, brazenly experimental The Young Pope, turn the saturation down about seventy percent so that everything looks more or less grayish brown, as is de rigueur, strip away the mystery, the sexuality, the insight into the church’s nature and its potentiality, and finally remove the humanity from its characters and you’ve got Edward Berger’s Conclave. It offers up a tame and slightly antiseptic view of the election of a new pope in the wake of the last one’s sudden death, and while it proceeds through all the requisite skullduggery and backstabbing with competence, propelled in large part by the always excellent work of Stanley Tucci, Ralph Fiennes, and John Lithgow, it has little in the way of human insight to offer. Its characters are scarcely people and are better understood as mouthpieces for the kind of courageous liberalism the film espouses, a view of human power and ambition so naive it borders on delusional.

Visually there isn’t much to write home about here. Berger’s camera is competent, he hits his marks, he has clearly cribbed specific shots from better, more imaginative artists, as evidenced by the early rapid candid shots of Cardinals from around the world against the awesome backdrops of St. Peter’s interior, which might have been lifted directly from Sorrentino’s body of work. He does have one admirable quality as a director, though: patience. He lingers on enough small things to mark him out as curious about human nature. The putting on and taking off of glasses. The casting of votes. Lingering close-ups on liver-spotted scalps and hands. There is an undertone of trying to find faith on the verge of mortal infirmity to the whole film, but it never coalesces into anything so bold as a plot.

One genuine pleasure the film does offer up is Sergio Castellitto as the odious Cardinal Geoffreto Tedesco, a flamboyant revanchist reactionary bent on dragging the church back into its fascist past and undoing the liberal reforms of the previous pope. With his bizarre veneers, his thick glasses, and his ever-present vape, he exudes a particular kind of fragile, excitable Italian masculinity that skitters as close to fagginess as the film appears interested in getting. His Islamophobic rant is a wonderful piece of physical acting, as big and splashy as his earlier insinuations are repellently subtle. The rest of the ensemble keeps things moving and prevents the film from getting bogged down in its messaging, though Carlos Diehz’s angelic Cardinal Benitez comes off a little flat, and the twist as to his nature is an absurdity lifted out of some made-for-TV movie from 1993. All things considered, the best way to enjoy Conclave is to stay home and put on The Young Pope instead.