The Safe Blasphemy of Conclave

As I am devote, practicing Catholic, I predict that most people will expect whatever issues I have with Conclave to be centered on its potentially sacrilegious final twist. If I were a reactionary in addition to being a Catholic that might be the case. However, as I am that particular kind of modern religious sort who enjoys when his faith and ideals are tested and prodded—not least of all because these clashes with opposition lead me to hone and clarify my own tenets—my issue with Conclave is actually due to its narrative conclusion not being heretical enough; of not having done enough to earn or contextualize its blasphemy. A movie that seems to want to be viewed as boldly insightful for how it tweaks dogma would be better served by not treating a two-millennia-old religious institution with the curiosity one might afford a neighborhood civic association. 

The basic plot of Conclave is ripe for narratives both plot-rich and intellectually challenging; the Pope has died suddenly, and the College of Cardinals must meet in seclusion to determine who will be the next Pope. Given that this man will serve as the spiritual leader for over a billion Catholics worldwide and will have the power to author religious doctrines that will guide the ethical and moral considerations of people at every level of power in every continent on earth (there’s bound to be at least one Catholic on Antarctica, right?) it is hard to imagine a person who will more meaningfully impact the future. This seat—the Chair of Saint Peter, actually—could not be a more ripe McGuffin for a movie to place at its center. 

Yet Conclave struggles to establish these stakes. Sure, a viewer who knows about the Catholic Church might get it, to an extent, but the film applies no energy to defining the powers up for grabs in this debate. There are discussions of liberal versus traditional cardinals, how women should be integrated into the hierarchy of the Church, and the failings of popes we have suffered through in the past, but the script never digs beneath the surface of these buzzy categories to get to their (forgive me) soul. 

This movie is precisely the kind of hollow exploration of religious life that feels born of creators who either exist entirely on the outside of such communities or are worried about alienating those who do. The men in this movie speak of the papacy as though it were the head of a large conglomerate—Succession: The Vatican. There is hardly a moment in this movie where their actions feel invested with the stakes of someone who believes they hold the souls of every man, woman, and child on earth in their hands. Could this be because the movie is attempting to make a point that, at the end of the day, these “men of faith” could actually not be less interested in faith at all? Certainly. But how is that more compelling than giving these men, who are meant to represent the near pinnacle of religious order, dense, considered thoughts and opinions on their holy vocation? 

For that is what the priesthood is; “vocation,” literally a call from God himself to serve the Church, and by extension all of humanity. These should be people who believe, to their very core, that there is a higher power to serve, who loves humanity and who calls out to them specifically to guide their flocks to the safety of His grace. Their will to power could be cast as a betrayal or corruption of that, but only if we as an audience believe that they hold that sense of vocation to begin with. These cardinals—save one—fail to reflect even a past of piety and devotion to the Lord, so how much can we as an audience be made to care about their diminishing of their spirits in the name of chasing an earthly throne? 

Hand-in-hand with this spiritual emptiness comes the narrative simplicity and safety that ultimately undoes whatever tension or meaning Conclave could have. When the cardinals speak to one another they speak in theses without context or defense. When one man brings up wanting women to be more involved in the church he is chided for being too progressive, but the conversation regarding the historical or spiritual reasons why women have been historically kept from positions of higher power in the Church specifically is untouched, as are his reasons for believing that history must be challenged. Conversations about homosexuality are likewise kept to their most basic form. The conflicts we witness, then, become rooted in the opposition of one concept to another, but not one idea to another. These characters come assigned with a single word pinned to their vestments and nothing more. 

Conclave ought to have worked to inform its audience of the what and the why and the how of the Catholic Church so that once the story began to push against those structures we might understand them as more than sloganeering. The characters could have been made more rich and more fully invested with thought and conflict so that we wouldn’t only feel as though their side was losing but that the soul of the church to which they have pledged their life as they saw it was at risk as well. This movie’s plot outline, as it stands, could be applied to any number of orders or organizations with few alterations. This is a failure of narrative, a waste of the potential to truly investigate and interrogate the virtues and flaws of faith in a pointed, singular fashion.

This is a shame considering how absolutely packed with talent this film is. Ralph Fiennes is wonderful as the dean of the college, Lawrence, who must wrangle the intrigues and rumors to ensure an orderly succession. Lucian Msamati brings the most spirituality on offer to his portrayal of Adeyemi, a hardline traditionalist from Africa. Isabella Rossellini is wasted in her role as a Sister who is in charge of the nuns who serve the college during the seclusion. These actors, among all the other talented performers on offer, could have absolutely delivered on the sort of rich, complicated, dialogue-intensive narrative that should have been wrung from this material. Unfortunately the incuriosity of the writers has hobbled these actors with a bland, shallow script that is given a sheen of respectability in execution from the dramatic and handsome aesthetics brought by director Edward Berger and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine. 

All of this underutilized creative talent becomes more galling when we get to the final twist of the film, which I have avoided for 1,000 words now but can no longer put off. [Yes, this is a spoiler warning.] 

Conclave ends with Benitez (Carlos Diehz), an enigmatic, secretly ordained cardinal from Kabul, being chosen as Pope following a series of terrorist bombings—I know, that old song. Then, in the final minutes of the film it comes to light that this cardinal is intersex; he was meant to have gone for a laparoscopic hysterectomy some time ago, but he decided not to go through with it. (I’m using ‘he’ here because at no point in the movie is the character ever referred to as a ‘she’.) So Lawrence, taken aback by this revelation, confronts the new Pope and then, following a discussion comprising still more surface-level platitudes, decides to hold the secret. 

What are we meant to take from this? Without the broader, deeper conversations whose absences I lamented above, we’re left with what should have been a revelation that could rock the Church to its foundations instead coming off as a cheap rug pull. Without having been afforded scriptural or dogmatic insights into the reasoning behind the positioning of women in the Church, how can we even begin to understand what Conclave wants us to think about Lawrence’s decision or what such a hypothetical could mean for the Church? 

More than this, though, the fact that Benitez is a character mostly devoid of agency blunts whatever possible statement could have been derived from his ascension. Benitez, according to his very hurriedly delivered side of the story, had no idea he was anything different from anyone else in seminary and only discovered his anomalous anatomy by accident. He was raised a man, lived as a man, passes still as a man. For a film that at times seems to flirt with the idea of wrestling with the relationship of the Church to its women to try to use this particular character to subvert expectations seems rather timid. Why not dip into the long history of women passing as men to enter male spaces to create a female papal infiltrator? Why not have her lay out a life of vocation—remember that word?—drowned out by the voices of men until she changed her appearance and thus her stature among them? What a more powerful and, frankly, subversive act that would have been. 

The issue is that this change—or any other change that might have involved other dogmatic principles, even those outside of gender—would have required more of the story. A lesser reliance on shadow corridors and whispered secrets and a greater emphasis on dragging our reason and faith into the light. A more full-throated oratory about the place of tradition and history as a counterbalance to progress and evolution. A tougher, more violent grappling with what it is we might want from those who lead us from a scary present into an uncertain future. 

This movie feels as though it were made by cowards; people who wanted to invert expectations but were worried about being too offensive by saying something real. As it stands now, there is not enough faith in this movie to warrant it being called blasphemy or heresy or sacrilege. My contention is that if you’re going to make a movie that feints toward controversy, you might as well go all in; risk a more cutting, intentional offense and make a goddamn statement. 

Conclave only feels radical to the reactionary. To the traditionalists it will feel heretical or sacrilegious. To the progressive it will feel like a brave thumb in the eye of a too-powerful superstition. But to anyone who values things like introversion, earnest debate, or an inquest into the heart of faith, Conclave is simply a thematic waste and an intellectual disappointment.