House of Cardinals

by Osita Nwanevu

There are few institutions as ready made for cinema as the Catholic Church. High aesthetics and high drama, much of it swirling around one of the most recognizable and influential men in the world⁠—this is a well that will never run dry. And because films and shows about the Church are easy, most of them are bad, though a few seem to break through with critics every so often. The big one five years ago was The Two Popes, a what-if story about Benedict and Francis affably hashing out their differences that I was as ambivalent about seeing as Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce were about their accent work in the film. I never got around to it. As penance a few nights ago, I saw Conclave, Edward Berger’s papal thriller based on the novel by Robert Harris.

Conclave is about a conclave. A pope we are told almost nothing about dies. The Cardinal Thomas Lawrence—Ralph Fiennes, who excels here, as ever, at looking gloomily concerned—must organize and run the election to succeed him. But, if you can believe it, there are shenanigans afoot. It turns out that the top candidates—these pious, principled men —have secrets.

Cardinal Tremblay—John Lithgow, who excels here, as ever, at being John Lithgow—may have been fired by the pope before his death. There’s something going on between Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) of Nigeria and a nun being tended to by the chary housekeeper Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini). The new Cardinal of Kabul (Carlos Diehz), a man no one’s heard of, mysteriously appears. And somewhere outside the Vatican, where all assembled for the conclave have been sequestered, cut off from all outside information that might influence their deliberations, bombs are going off.