Keeping so many cardinals on task is not easy, it turns out, and though “Conclave” is by no means a comedy, there is something wryly humorous in seeing so many men of the cloth cajole and scheme like so many duplicitous operatives on The Hill. Like John Lithgow who as the imperious old Canadian oak Cardinal Tremblay who in his 6′ 4″ height conveys how his character conceitedly stands above it all even as his actions tell us otherwise. There is also Cardinal Bellini, nimbly played by Stanley Tucci as righteous man who doesn’t want the Papacy, but also a self-righteous man who doesn’t want Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) to get the Papacy lest he take the church back to roughly the Dark Ages, and there is Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), the surprise Cardinal, you might say, a Mexican archbishop that no one seems to know and who comes across like a blinding beacon of politeness in a sea of shady operatives. You don’t have to be an old hat at the genre to know Benitez turning up signals a trap door is waiting to open.
Indeed, for all the papal intrigue, and nominal twists and turns of Peter Straughan’s screenplay, there is little in the way of real suspense or even intrigue. “Conclave” feels so orderly, like it’s all been preordained by God himself, as if you can see Him dispensing the narrative breadcrumbs one-by-one. If one Cardinal gets a hefty chunk of the vote, meaning the winds, as Cardinal Lawrence says at one point, seem to be with him, you can be rest assured, they are not, and an October surprise, or whatever colloquialism the Catholic church has for October surprises, is in store. And though these surprises, like the one involving conservative-minded Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), seem readymade to unlock philosophical, even theological, debate, such debate never really materializes.
“I know you to be a good man,” says Lawrence to the suddenly disgraced Cardinal Adeyemi and we are meant to take that as gospel, no follow-up. It’s emblematic of Cardinal Lawrence’s ostensible crisis of faith, which is mentioned yet hardly materializes in terms of the story, a device with no punch, no follow-through. Instead, Berger relies on Fiennes to carry this crisis in his turn, and he mostly does, hunched, or pitched forward, carrying the weight of it on his back, taking it personally when accused of his own ulterior motives. Even so, Fiennes’s turn ultimately fits in with the oddly restrained conclusion of the movie. Brought face-to-face with the unexplainable, a moment that seems to breach scientific law, if not provide a messenger directly from God, “Conclave” hardly mirrors that realm in its aesthetic, as, say, Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” did. Neither does Fiennes. Together, it siphons away all sense not just of climactic surprise but of wonder, transforming an honest to God miracle into a standard issue reveal.