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.
On one reading, the rampant corruption, petty in-fighting, and self-interested power plays in the film show that the Catholic Church hierarchy is an institution of power like any other, mired in cutthroat internal politics, and that its actual substance, at least at the top, has little to do with any real spiritual content. There’s an element of truth to this that should not be overlooked—clearly the papal conclave is a mess of interpersonal animosity, and it’s not hard to imagine that the Christian God would be unhappy with how these cardinals are behaving towards one another.
Scandals abound: Cardinal Tremblay plots to expose Cardinal Adeyemi as having fathered an illegitimate child, while covering up his own dismissal by the late pope. Cardinal Lawrence, acting in what he feels is good faith, drags up skeletons from the other cardinals’ closets, and then doesn’t know what to do with them. Cardinals Tedesco and Bellini treat the conclave as a political power struggle, the former a reactionary traditionalist who sees the Church as a bulwark against both Islam and liberalism, while the latter wants to extend and deepen the progressive gains of the Second Vatican Council. And Cardinal Benitez arrives as a big question mark, because the late pope installed him as a secret Archbishop of Kabul.
If this were all the movie was about, it would still be quite good, or at the very least entertaining. With the pacing and score of a political thriller, Conclave effectively dramatizes and elevates the election of a pope not just into a suspenseful story, but also one that says something about the Catholic Church as a social force in the 21st century and how its various factions attempt to navigate the challenges of the post-colonial, post-Vatican II world. Each prominent cardinal is something of stand-in for a different political faction within the Church, and their friction often enough leads to sparks.
But I believe there’s something more, and that this something can be found by paying close attention to Cardinal Lawrence. At the beginning of the film, Lawrence is undergoing something of a crisis of faith, one we’re led to believe has been going on for quite some time, that has shaken him up to the point that he asked the late pope to be dismissed as the Dean of Cardinals; the pope rejected his resignation. Then as organizer of the conclave, Lawrence prioritizes Church unity over the interests of any particular faction, although he sympathizes most with the liberal Bellini.
As the film progresses, Lawrence is dealt some challenging hands, to say the least, having to navigate various scandals, setbacks, and tensions. We get the sense that he doesn’t always get it right; or at least, he’s not confident that he does. His personal secretary feeds him intel from the outside world as he requests it, but he continuously struggles to discern how best to act on each piece of new information. I appreciated the film’s nuanced take on scandal. Cover-ups in the Catholic Church have had disastrous consequences, most severely for survivors of abuse, but also for Christianity in general. However, it’s also true that digging up dirt on political opponents and utilizing it in a cynical way is also damaging, especially when the case does not involve abuse, or the motivation for uncovering something is less noble than genuine concern for the affected parties.
So, Lawrence struggles to keep things together, both for the conclave and for himself, as the various factions maneuver in shadows and whispers. He seems to feel some ambivalence about his own ambitions, at first denying them, but finally accepting them once he realizes that maybe he himself should become the next pope after all.
God doesn’t often announce himself with fanfare, like the burning bush or cloud of smoke, but rather in quiet, subtle moments in which his love is shared between human beings. There are two such moments in Lawrence’s character arc that stand out to me.
First, when Lawrence confronts Adeyemi about his past relationship and illegitimate child. It’s clear that Adeyemi is no longer in the running, and he weeps. As Lawrence is leaving his room, Adeyemi asks him if they could pray together. Lawrence accepts, and they share that moment together, as two flawed men, prostrate before the God of mercy. I found it to be one of the more genuinely affecting moments of the film.
The second comes at the end of the story. A bomb detonates outside the Vatican, which Tedesco uses as an opportunity to espouse his theories about Western decline and the necessity for the Church to wage a holy war against Islam. Benitez repudiates his views, calling for love instead of war. Having quietly gained support throughout the conclave, Benitez pulls ahead with this speech and is elected the next pope.
In the final moments of the film, Lawrence confronts Benitez, now Pope Innocent XIV, about a procedure he’d scheduled in Switzerland and then canceled. Innocent reveals that he is intersex, and that he decided against a hysterectomy, because "I am as God made me." Lawrence chooses to keep the new pope’s secret. I believe in this small act of grace, Lawrence at last finds some peace that he had been so struggling to attain.
Lawrence’s decision not to expose Innocent as intersex, and thus ineligible to be pope, is hardly sufficient in the grand scheme of things. It’s still messed up that he has to hide it in the first place. And it does nothing to prevent more Tedescos from popping up and attempting to turn back the clock on the Church’s progress. And still I’m sure the cardinals will feud bitterly at the next conclave too. Nonetheless, this movement is an act of love, a turn towards the Kingdom of Heaven, tiny like a mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32).
Conclave reminded me of the novel The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos. It follows a young Catholic priest who struggles with his faith as well as debilitating stomach pain. Throughout the novel the priest attempts to live out the Gospel in his small parish, to mixed results. He witnesses and takes part in pettiness, conflict, and suffering. The story is one of nearly continuous physical and spiritual degradation.
But there is redemption. On his deathbed, the titular priest is told that the priest coming to administer his last rites is running behind, and may not make it on time. Instead of responding in anxiety and impatience, he says simply, “Does it matter? Grace is everywhere.” And then he dies. In his final moments the priest is able to see beyond the laws and customs of the religious institution, perhaps even the holy sacraments, not necessarily useless, but certainly not the thing-in-itself. Similarly, Lawrence is able to act daringly against custom in the name of grace, for the law was made for man (Mark 2:27).
There are countless ways to summarize the core insights of Christianity, none sufficient on its own, but I think one of them may be this: in the final analysis, the human drama is not a tragedy, but a comedy. Whatever suffering may come, as real and heartbreaking as it can be, is ultimately transfigured by grace. This to me is the real meaning of resurrection.