Conclave ***** (2024, Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, Isabella Rossellini) – Classic Movie Review 13,479

Edward Berger’s scintillating 2024 drama film Conclave is written by Peter Straughan, based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris. Ralph Fiennes stars as the British liberal cardinal who has to organise a conclave to elect the next pope.

Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Isabella Rossellini co-star.

Director Edward Berger’s scintillating 2024 drama film Conclave is written by Peter Straughan, based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris. Okay, the film is aimed at significantly older audiences. And it turns out that they will actually go to cinemas: 77 per cent of viewers were over 35, with the largest demographic over 55 at 44 per cent, and 67 per cent identifying as Caucasian. Do people actually ‘identify’ before going into the cinema? Well, apparently they do.

Whoever they were, there were a lot of them. Conclave has taken $116.4 million at the box office worldwide on a $20 million production budget. Intrigue is always, well, intriguing. You can’t really call it a political thriller, or a conspiracy thriller, or even a thriller, but if that’s what takes to get people interested, why not?

Ralph Fiennes stars as British liberal Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, dean of the College of Cardinals, who has to organise a conclave to elect the next pope after the Pope dies of a heart attack, but finds himself investigating secrets and scandals about the candidates.

The four leading candidates are Aldo Bellini of the United States (Stanley Tucci), a progressive; Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati ) of Nigeria, a social conservative; Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow) of Canada, a moderate; and Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) of Italy, a staunch traditionalist.

Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress. In a better world, they would have won. Of its eight Oscar nominations, it won only for Best Adapted Screenplay (for British playwright Peter Straughan) but at least that was something, some proper recognition.

It won four awards at the 78th British Academy Film Awards, including Best Film, and also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.

Conclave is one of the films of the year, not least for Fiennes’s brilliant performance, a smouldering bobby-dazzler, and Tucci’s sharp and showy support one as American liberal Cardinal Aldo Bellini., but also for a twisty provocative script, and Berger’s imaginative film-making. The two hours speed relentlessly, fascinatingly along to the story’s surprise, maybe shock, climax.

There is a lot of talk, but it is talk of the highest order, and Berger easily disguises that by making it stylish and compelling. And Stéphane Fontaine’s cinematography is so cinematic, while Production Design (Suzie Davies), Set Decoration (Cynthia Sleiter) and Costume Design (Lisy Christl) are more than merely meticulous, they are glorious. For heaven’s sake, the set designers took the greatest of care to replicate the Sistine Chapel!

John Lithgow is good as the untrustworthy and devious Canadian moderate Cardinal Joseph Tremblay, and Isabella Rossellini is really effective in her little co-starring role as Sister Agnes, the cardinals’ head caterer and housekeeper, making you wish she had much more to do. But it’s a man’s movie of course: she’s the only woman in the cast.

Scintillating means funny, exciting, and clever, or exciting and intelligent. Conclave is all these things, and comes highly recommended.

It was voted British or Irish Film of the Year at the London Film Critics’ Circle Awards and Ralph Fiennes won Actor of the Year.

Ralph Fiennes has earned three Academy Award nominations for Schindler’s List (1993), The English Patient (1996) and Conclave (2024), without winning.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,479

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com