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I went to see Conclave, the new movie about the papacy starring Ralph Fiennes, and was surprised by how many people were in the theater. It was the fullest I’d seen a movie theater for years.
That so many people are interested in the Church’s inner workings is a good thing — but that this movie is the vehicle for their education about it is unfortunate. The movie is bound to cause confusion about the Church.
I told a friend, “I liked it, which is too bad, because it has an agenda.”
The film was beautifully shot by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine — and director Edward Berger gave him beautiful things to shoot. Watching it was like being back in Italy visiting the ancient sites of the Catholic faith.
But throughout film history, artful film techniques are often put at the service of ideological goals, and that was the case here. The sets were extremely dark, to telegraph the movie’s opinion that the Church’s business takes place in shadow. In the movie, it takes an unwelcome intrusion from the real world to open a window, and the film only became brightly lit to make a symbolic point, when religious sisters stream out of the conclave’s kitchen, escaping their servile role at last.
The acting was artful also. Ralph Fiennes is excellent at looking interestingly troubled — perfect for a dean of cardinals who is extremely worried for very complicated reasons. The other parts were well acted, and it was nice to see Jonathan Lithgow, who was Archbishop of New York in Cabrini, back in clerics as a Canadian cardinal.
The film’s agenda is evident, though, when these characters make misleading statements, for instance about a former pope being part of the Hitler Youth (which every German boy was registered for involuntarily in 1940s Germany).
But you can also tell it has an ideological agenda, because the film ignores what real conclaves focus on.
Ads for the movie call it a “political thriller” and conclaves do include lots of politics; but they aren’t only or even mainly about politics.
In the film, two of the major contenders for the papal throne give speeches early on in the film. This is true to life: Our last two papal elections, cardinals say, were strongly influenced by the remarks of two cardinals: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s homily about friendship with Jesus Christ helped him become Pope Benedict XVI, and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio’s remarks about evangelization gave us Pope Francis.
Bergoglio told cardinals the next pope should be someone steeped in “the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ” and “the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing” — someone willing to bring Jesus Christ to “the peripheries.”
In other words, in the last two conclaves, cardinals elected those who focused on Christ.
The two cardinals’ speeches in this movie were about doubt, and embracing other faiths. The most significant reference to Christ was a claim that Jesus was uncertain about God’s will because he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A cardinal would know that Jesus was quoting the first line of Psalm 22; a sign that he was certain that this question had an answer.
These cardinals voice the theme of the movie: Certainty is “a sin” and “the great enemy of unity.” A dead giveaway that this is propagandistic is that the filmmakers apply that theme only to the certainties of one ideological side.
It’s important to know what conclaves are really like.
In a 1996 Apostolic Constitution, St. John Paul II updated conclave procedures, and went to great lengths to disallow quid-pro-quos and other papal campaigning (see Nos. 78-86). But he added, “It is not my intention, however, to forbid, during the period in which the See is vacant, the exchange of views concerning the election.”
Conclave is not out of line for having its characters vocalize their thoughts and feelings. But the kind of bald campaigning the movie is filled with is highly unrealistic. French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin visited Benedictine College in Kansas after serving as Archbishop of Lyon and described conclave life.
“In the conclave, we can talk about whatever we want. But no one can tell you who to vote for. No one has the right to say who the other should vote for or who they have voted for,” he reports. But the cardinals in the movie Conclave talk of little else.
The strangest thing about the movie, however, is its final twist (slight spoiler alert).
When the Conclave finally concludes, there is a development that comes out of nowhere: a prominent cleric in the movie is revealed to have a complicated physiological makeup — presenting as male but also having female physical characteristics.
This is a rare condition, but is not unknown to the Church in the way the movie suggests. According to research Father Clinton Sensat shared, the Medieval Church treated such hermaphroditic cases with care and concern, and that is what canonists today do, also. The Church doesn’t demonize people in these difficult situations, but welcomes them into the full sacramental life of the Church — but, along with other physical impediments, this condition bars them from ordination.
In a recent case, when it was a discovered a priest was ineligible for ordination, the Church didn’t hesitate to declare invalid the sacraments he himself had conferred. It wouldn’t hesitate to so in a case like the one in the movie, either.
In brief, then, Conclave is artfully deceptive.
It tries to create confusion where there is none; it tries to demonize certainty, but only certainty it disagrees with; and it is missing what actually makes its Roman settings significant: Their place in the continuing mission of Jesus Christ on earth.
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