Conclave

Showing a keen understanding of the politics behind power grabs, “Conclave” is based on the story by Robert Harris. The film carefully presents the cast before pushing the plot, so we can relax and enjoy the cinematography, despite knowing something’s afoot. The film’s script presents Church intricacies while Bertelmann’s ingenious score complicates our experience. It’s rare for sound design to play a role in plot in film. Conclave is unique in its acoustic intricacy: sound mixer Valentino Gianni, sound designer Ben Baird and the editors present a sublime auditory panorama, recording breaths taken, footfalls and other intricate details in an exceedingly pleasing manner. This level of intimacy is difficult to maintain, and took additional takes to perfect. Coupled with Bertelmann’s unique score, the viewer receives a heightened audible experience.Conclave’s wonderful message, coupled with its thoughtful politics make for a truly dramatic political thriller. The carefully designed set adds depth to the plot. The cast is stellar and production is practically flawless. “Conclave” presents the best Hollywood has to offer and will be hailed as an obscure classic by future generations.--- Spoilers: The conclusion’s explanation – Read after seeing the movie!Conclave is not a Woke production. If it were, there’d be clear signs: a woman protagonist, men always failing, and disaster everywhere. Conclave has none of this grossly prejudiced favoritism. DEI is, also, more about money in pockets than support for a cause. I’m a spiritual student raised by Catholics, taught by Non-denominational Christians, and trained by Shamans and can deliver a deeper understanding of religion.Conclave’s conclusion can be infuriating to Catholics, but shouldn’t be. Sin, in Catholicism, means to “miss the mark”, implying you’re not behaving as God intended. Sin happens when you lose control, letting a part of you sway the whole. You disrespect yourself, God, and, more often than not, others. It means you are no longer behaving consciously. It’s easier for the Church to tell us NOT to be sexual in lieu of explaining it and sin. Basically, though, Love, Desire and Lust are not the same. Love is a respect, given without expectation or requirement. Desire is a physical attraction arising from the body and its chemicals. Lust is a mental obsession, one which objectifies its focus, dehumanizing **** the World’s next Pope has both male and female organs, then he is “Intersexual”, not “Transsexual”. Becoming a different gender may be an exploration of sexuality for some, an obsession, mental illness or the effect of abuse for others. It’s difficult to label what is sin because only each individual can know if they are conscious and in control or not. If they disrespect, abuse or ignore what God made them, then they sin. Otherwise, they are consciously exploring the creation they’ve been given. Cardinal Benítez is not transsexual, he’s uncorrupted by ideology, peer pressure, lust or desire. He’s simply “what God made him” (born intersexual). To reject him is to reject God’s creation. This is who he is; some people are born this way. As human beings we are all imperfect. That is the wonderful message of Conclave that I hope enriches your life.

The technically astute Conclave—notably production design, costumes and music—invites viewers into the cloistered world of Vatican intrigue, spinning an elaborate tale around the election of a new Pope. At its core, the film promises a revelatory look at the inner sanctum of the Roman Catholic Church, but ultimately delivers a blend of half-lit secrets, procedural manoeuvring, and shadowy politics that, while constructed with care, never quite ignite the passions or paranoia that such rarefied subject matter might suggest. From the very beginning, Conclave is steeped in the aura of secrecy. The ancient rituals, the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, and the absolute silence that is said to descend upon the cardinals as they cast their votes—all are rendered in deliberate, moody tones. The camera lingers lovingly on marbled corridors and crimson vestments, building an atmosphere thick with tradition and expectation. However, the film’s claim to reveal the “secret details” and political machinations of the conclave is ultimately a fictional embellishment. The real-life conclave is, by design, shrouded in silence, but Conclave treats its audience to whispered conspiracies in candlelit corners, covert alliances forged over late-night confessions, and the quiet manipulation of the Church’s highest office by men both devout and ambitious. These invented details are drawn with a novelist’s flair, but at times the artifice shows through; the politics feel less like explosive revelations and more like familiar tropes borrowed from the genre of political thrillers. The plot itself moves with unhurried deliberation toward an outcome that is, on its face, extraordinary, but also curiously contrived. The film’s climactic revelation—a dramatic twist in the election that upends expectations—should provoke gasps, yet the groundwork for this outcome is so carefully telegraphed that it lands with a muted thud. Instead of electrifying the story, the twist reinforces a sense of the process being stage-managed, its surprises orchestrated rather than organic. As the conclave’s smoke rises, white and billowing, the audience is left more with a sense of manufactured spectacle than genuine awe. Throughout, there is a persistent shadowiness to the proceedings, a sense of vague oppression that seeps into every exchange. The cardinals, though varied in nationality and temperament, are drawn as types—schemers, idealists, cynics—rather than rounded characters, and their interactions often feel stifled by the weight of symbolism. The film’s vision of the Vatican is one of corridors where daylight rarely penetrates, and where every word and gesture seems calculated for effect. As a result, the atmosphere is less one of suspense than of mild claustrophobia. In the end, Conclave is a rather mild concoction. For all its brooding shadows and whispered secrets, the film never quite dares to transcend its own fictional boundaries. It offers a carefully constructed, fictionalized glimpse behind the Vatican’s closed doors, but its politics and secrets remain more decorative than daring—an ornate, ultimately safe imagining of the extraordinary, where the real drama is always just out of reach and with this a not too hidden agenda at what the Catholic church should be—not that anyone’s going to be changed by it.

Despite being a fair adaptation to the novel and not to mention the fine performances the actors did, this movie is far too shallow to admire as it tries to be convincing but ends up being weak. Make it more bolder, please!

Whilst the production quality is good, the story drags on a lot for such little happening. The spoiler free summaries lead you to believe that there's a more in-depth corruption scandal than there is, when it's minor and simple corruption, not relating to criminal behaviour. There are some heretical concepts pushed as normal and accepted concepts, which are not biblically sound, and it seems quite clear to me that it was done to push certain ideological viewpoints, so if you're looking to watch the movie from any sort of accuracy or educational standpoint, then you won't find that here. The ending plot twist was so absurd and out of pocket that I couldn't even be annoyed at it, it actually made me physically laugh, despite the intended tone of the scene. The only reason I wouldn't give it lower is because the cinematography is actually decent. So if you don't care about slower pacing, accuracy of the portrayal of Christian beliefs, and don't go in expecting that there's an in-depth criminal corruption scandal, then you may find the movie to be a 6 instead of a 3.

(Mauro Lanari) After last year's "direct-to-Oscar" with "The Zone of Interest", a trainload of bullshìt about a "theology of the Shoah" outdated for six decades and still stuck in the obtuse Weil-Wiesel-Arendt triad, a new British-American production attempts an encore with postwar Catholic theology entrusted to Berger (who already won an Oscar in 2023 for an "academic" adaptation of Remarque's novel). That Harris is a writer of politico-religious fantasy is a marginal detail, Christian history drips with far more scandalous real events (on the topic, I'd suggest a Congar biopic), but why bother? In current digital sophistry, it is more than enough to be persuasively seduced and conned, while the Vatican has no trouble dismissing it as "an involuntary parody." Christie in the Sistine? "And Then There Were None" has become the format of every world pseudo-talent show.