After 35 seconds of feedback and 76 seconds of further build up, Small Dog Frenzy pause briefly before launching into a musical cavalcade and do not rest for 47 minutes. There is no climax, no individual moment of flair, no catharsis. Every moment thereafter is singularly uncompromising.
Conclave is a religious film.
I don’t mean that its subject matter is religion, but that its themes, narrative structure, and final denouement lend the film to a Christian reading. It’s not just about the election of a Pope, it’s about how men and women attempt to live out their faith.
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Harold Bloom once said that there were only four active great American novelists: Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Pynchon, and Philip Roth. That was in 2003, and it was an absurd thing to say even back then (I won’t dignify it with an elaborate rebuke). Twenty years later, Roth has died; Pynchon is retired, or close to it; DeLillo continues to publish, but with diminishing readership and acclaim; and, as of a couple weeks ago, Cormac McCarthy has died.