A review of the entertaining new film “Conclave”
Which is best? The book or the film? It’s an endless – and perhaps fruitless – debate.
I’ve read and enjoyed so many books by Robert Harris, but not the 2016 novel on which this film is based. The book has been an international bestseller, but this excellent cinematic version has so many visual and aural elements that cannot be rendered as vividly on the written page: imposing settings in Rome and at the Cinecittà Studios (standing in for the Vatican), vibrant clothing and ornamentation (all that red and all those crosses), superb cinematography (the French Stéphane Fontaine), an arresting soundtrack (the German Volker Bertelman), a magnificent roster of actors (Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini), and lines delivered in Italian, Spanish and Latin as well as sonorous English).
Of course, we have to thank Harris for the narrative: the machinations and power plays of the election of a new pope by the College of Cardinals sequestered in the Sistine Chapel. However, German director Edward Berger, giving us such a different work from his “All Quiet On The Western Front”, and British scriptwriter, Peter Straughan, who adapted “Wolf Hall” for television, have done brilliantly in creating a cinematic version, while Ralph Fiennes – playing the cardinal who must convene the conclave – gives an understated, but career-best and Oscar-worthy, performance.
If the film has some weaknesses, they are essentially those of the novel: a rather fanciful plot with a weak ending and a simplistic representation of the dichotomy in the Catholic Church of the debate between liberalism and conservatism. But now I am going to read the book …