Conclave

The Pope is dead. That much is certain. Everything before, thereafter, that is a little more difficult. In accordance with ancient rules the Cardinals assemble in the Holy See, to engage in Conclave. The process that elects the absolute monarch who occupies but does not sit upon the Throne of Peter. To become for a time the head of of a microstate protected by the Lateran treaties, and the Servant of the servants of God.

Adapted from the Robert Harris novel of the same name, Conclave makes several changes. Perhaps the most consequential are names. As Dean, the man responsible for the administration of the conclave, the book's Jacopo Lomeli becomes Thomas Lawrence. Some of that is a function of casting, Ralph Fiennes' experience and weight make him more than convincing as a man wracked with the conflict between certainty and faith. Some of that is thematic. Thomas readily invokes themes of doubt. Scholars of the saints might recognise that the Perseids are known as his tears, that Lawrence is patron of librarians and archivists, both apt in this story, and from the accounts of his martyrdom by being suspended over hot coals, comedians. "I'm well done on this side, turn me over", he is said to have said. Two masks in theatre.

Theatricality is apt. Adapted by Peter Straughan, no stranger to adaptations of novels, this feels in places very much of the stage. Some of that is the cast, Fiennes central, and some of that is the air of ritual and space. Straughan's versions include Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, The Goldfinch, The Men Who Stare At Goats. All have an element of the conspiratorial, the confessional, conversations given weight by what is said and unsaid.

Director Edward Berger and his director of photography Stephane Fontaine have made every frame art. Digital trickery might have made the Sistine backgrounds but these are spaces of light and veneration that are rightly lit and venerated. The iconography of Catholicism and the industry of administration sit neatly together. The rooms in which the Cardinals are sequestered feel perfect, a balance of the fine and functional, a marbled motel, a Trappist Travelodge.

Sometimes it is in the close that we escape the stage, sometimes it is in the far. Framing through doors and arches, staircases from the palatial to the prosaic, islands of colour in a lecture hall, closely crowding the back of necks on walks through fate. Sometimes it's in the brief. Film can move between scenes more deftly than almost anything stagehands can wrangle, though in places a change of lighting can illuminate or contrast where a door or window cannot. Fiennes' performance is central but around him a stunning cast. Isabella Rossellini has perhaps a dozen lines but every moment she is on screen is electric, and I will do her the courtesy of saying she delivers one climactic moment with just a single gesture.

As competing cardinals, greats like Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow find footing that sometimes tends to board-treading oratory rather than something more restrained, but these are roles made for the stentorian. Politicians and preachers both, all projecting. Sergio Castellitto is a treat as the traditionalist Tedesco - a detail I particularly enjoyed was his vape pen. Lucian Msamati, as Cardinal Adeyemi, is one of many stage veterans who bring real presence to their roles.

Throughout the film there are indicators of real craft. It's present in performances, in roles that are small like that of Jacek Koman and roles that are still like that of Carlos Diehz. It's present in details, that vape pen, the kitchens, the details of cigarettes and motorcycles, terrapins and territoriality. It's present in composition, that purposeful placement that pushes the notion of the proscenium into something only cinema can do, to move the audience's perspective, literally. It's present in Volker Bertelman's score, which moves on and from an early choral piece. That's both structurally and historically, the Allegri Misereri a polyphonous Renaissance work whose mysteries and legendarium includes all manner of unwritten rules. Gregorio Allegri's work is now nearly four-hundred years old, composed for the Sistine Chapel itself, and its complicated structure is one of many indicative elements of the work's themes.

Those are, for the most part, not subtle. Small details like individual letters in the credits being differently coloured are more so, that those start with 'I' and later include 'X' twice. Those both appear in a papal name which might be one of the film's several obfuscations and modernisations from Harris' original. That includes changes to geography, and while there are references to events from canonical history this is perhaps five minutes into the future or five steps into an alternate present. It doesn't help to read it that literally, Conclave uses the iconography of the real to tell an imagined story, and the word 'real' is doing a lot to support that. It is a rock upon which the film is built.

The cross is a void that obfuscates a fresco. The Vatican is a place of governance and reverance, a mixture of the sacred and the mundane. There is power in doing, and also in not doing. The quality of mercy is restraint. The quality of wealth is tasteful excess. The quality of Conclave is evident.