Conclave
Year: 2024
Rating: PG
Length: 120 minutes / 2.00 hours
While I’m not Catholic myself, the process of selecting a new pope is fascinating. There’s so much secrecy behind the event that it’s difficult to know what goes on behind closed doors since all the public really sees is either black or white smoke outside the Vatican. I initially thought little this film until it was nominated for Best Picture, but once I saw it, Conclave (2024) became one of my favorites for the year, partly because it perfectly captures similar political turmoil elsewhere in the world.
Perhaps my love of Conclave comes from the pageantry of the whole thing. It’s all serious and ceremony, but the little cracks in the façade start to appear as scandals and twists are revealed to the audience. Considering all the drama around the Catholic Church (Spotlight (2015) or Doubt (2008) anyone?), I was glad to see this movie address many of the issues that currently challenge this institution of faith. Of course, the actors assigned to pull this off did such an excellent job. Ralph Fiennes was honestly robbed of his Best Actor statue, but Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow were no slouches either.
What really spoke to me in Conclave was how it took modern issues and made a gripping and thrilling narrative out of it. Wars in Islamic countries. Acceptance of LGBTQ+ Christians. Women abused by men in power. All these talking points mirror political discourse in the United States, but the trappings and setting of the Catholic church made it feel less apolitical. It still breaks down to one side against the other: those who want to go back to Latin and those who want to be more progressive. Still, the ending is the best part and my absolute favorite of the entire film.
A taut political thriller full of pageantry and scandal, I give Conclave 5.0 stars out of 5.
