Countdown to the Oscars: Conclave Review!
We’re just days away from the 97th Academy Awards, and so much is going on: Nosferatu is shaving his mustache. Ariana Grande is having an affair with Squidward. Robbie Williams still can’t believe being a monkey didn’t win over Americans. I thought this would be a good time to do a rundown of all the films nominated for Best Picture, counting down to Hollywood’s Hottest Night! (Besides the fires.) Some of these I’ve already reviewed, but to quote Harvey “Diddy” Weinstein: “Fuck you, you know you want it.” And so without further ado:
CONCLAVE (dir. Edward Berger)
Best Picture chances: It would require divine intervention.
This movie may exist solely to piss off Megyn Kelly, which is reason enough. If you hadn’t heard, after she saw Edward Berger’s Conclave, she flipped the fuck out. Blood coming out of her eyes; blood coming out of her whatever. The whole thing was an affront to her Catholic upbringing, and tbh? She’s got a point. Centering on the politics of selecting a new Pope, the movie is stylish as H-E-Double-Hockey Sticks, and plotted with such wild revelations that it seems deliberately designed to offend conservative Catholics. You know, that historically unflappable crowd. But the reality is that the movie wasn’t made for their pleasure. I mean, it’s not even shaped like a little boy’s ass.
The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, who has been tasked with running the conclave that will ultimately choose the successor of the recently deceased Pope. Catty bitches fly in from all over the world for the event, all with eyes on becoming the next Big Vicar on Campus themselves. Chief among these is an Italian conservative who hilariously puffs on a vape while throwing dagger eyes at liberal contender Stanley Tucci. Most mysterious is the arrival of a Cardinal that nobody’s ever heard of, but who seems to have had some sort of quiet relationship to the previous Pope. I can feel Megyn’s blood boiling already.
And that’s pretty much the setup. Berger films the thing far better than he needs to. The images contrast deep reds against stark marble whites. All the shots are perfectly balanced. Almost every frame seems like a painting. Why this is treated with such care I don’t know, as the actual story’s genre-feel seems too inconsequential to merit this rigorous of filmmaking. I’m sure the screenplay, based on the book by Robert Harris, is well-researched enough that a lot of the ins-and-outs of the ritualistic process are true, but it’s the interoffice politics that are front and center. Isabella Rossellini plays a nun lurking in the margins of the film, and her performance has been consistently praised, but I found it to be pretty empty. She’s scored an Oscar nomination for it, but really she’s just trading on being Isabella Rossellini.
The movie has all the intrigue of an airport potboiler, and is just as unsubtle. And yet it’s mounted so lavishly, with such impossibly precise compositions and striking color choices that the level of skill involved in its creation seems incongruous to the subject matter. It’s like if somebody took The Da Vinci Code a little too seriously. But I know that’s a weird criticism. If a movie is going to be a by-the-numbers genre exercise, it might as well be uhh…immaculately conceived, right?
Post-scripture: I’m currently steeped in Krystof Kieslowski’s Dekalog, a series of films dramatizing the everyday realities of the Ten Commandments. It’s astonishingly moving and grounded in the trenches of real life. Religious or not, it outlines how humans grapple with the moral choices we’re constantly bombarded with. Conclave, on the other hand, ultimately has little to do with the mysteries of faith, and instead operates according to the clockwork rules of a whodunit. And on those grounds, it works fine. And it looks great. And the score slaps. And it turns the screws on that cunt Megyn Kelly. Amen.