The twisty, Oscar-tipped Conclave needed more than shock and awe

Ralph Fiennes is a vaping cardinal tasked with electing a new pope, in a film that plays as a conspiracy thriller – if only it interrogated its own ideas, though

If Conclave can be reduced to a single image, it’s undoubtedly that of a cardinal taking a hit from his vape. We’re in the most hallowed spaces of the Vatican here, implanted within private practices the vast majority of the film’s audience are never meant to see (although, really, these are all sound stages in Rome’s Cinecittà Studios). Yet director Edward Berger allows us to peer in, like children planted at the doorway, to giggle at how pedestrian and mortally flawed it all is beneath the gilded finery and incense.

Cardinals scroll on their phones. Cardinals slurp up bowls of tortellini soup. Cardinals have conversations about the future of the Catholic Church next to the espresso machine. Conclave turns ritual into the hysteria of a murder mystery, the tension of a political conspiracy, the pressurised force of a criminal heist.

When we first meet Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), chosen to oversee the papal conclave to elect a successor to the (very) recently deceased Pope, he puts his red skullcap on as if he were rolling down a balaclava outside the doors of a city bank.

Berger, whose skill in setting tone and atmosphere was already apparent in his Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (2022), adapts Robert Harris’s 2016 novel in a way that’s so taut and controlled that it’s near-impossible not to be drawn in. Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine’s manipulation of shadow gives the film poise and beauty, with all players perfectly arranged within any given shot. Whenever composer Volker Bertelmann’s sparse but methodical score kicks in, it’s as if someone’s suddenly fired a gun.

Yet there’s a misapplied solemnity to Conclave, which is too married to its shock-and-awe narrative approach to actually interrogate any of its own ideas. Lawrence, a classic liberal, has come to doubt the Church’s ability to serve God, yet reluctantly finds himself spearheading the movement to ensure fellow liberal Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) leads the vote, defeating the reactionary Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto). There are other viable candidates: the moderate but shifty Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow); Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), who would be the first African pope but is even more conservative than Tedesco; and Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz), newly appointed to Kabul in Afghanistan, yet so mysterious he wasn’t even on the invite list.

Lawrence believes that these men’s ambitions will ultimately bow to a higher moral purpose. In other words, he’s naive. Yet, Fiennes has the ability to make even the most noble of his characters seem a little unknowable (see: his career-best turn in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel). A little frown here, a downturned mouth there, and suddenly there’s the hint of a thought unspoken.

Papal person: Ralph Fiennes in ‘Conclave’ (Philippe Antonello/Focus Features)

Lawrence, and the rest of the self-determined progressives, aren’t exactly free from hypocrisy. Morals are slippery when it comes time to play nice with the opposition and move their chess pieces a little further across the board. Peter Straughan’s script gestures at the fact, but never truly confronts it. But it’s easy to wonder what the perspective might be of an outsider like Benitez, or the nuns that quietly go about their duties in the background, led by Isabella Rossellini’s Sister Agnes. As one liberal cardinal argues, “We’re mortal men. We serve an ideal. We cannot always be ideal.” Whose ideal, exactly, is that?

Dir: Edward Berger. Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, Isabella Rossellini, Lucian Msamati, Carlos Diehz. Cert 12A, 120 mins

‘Conclave’ is in cinemas from 29 November