Conclave

The Geometry of Faith

I’ve often wondered if the people who run the world’s oldest institutions feel the weight of history on their shoulders, or if they’re just too busy managing the logistics of the present to notice. Edward Berger’s *Conclave*—a film that feels less like a historical drama and more like a high-stakes, liturgical procedural—doesn't offer an answer, but it offers a fascinating look at the machinery of power. It’s a movie about the election of a new Pope, yet it’s entirely devoid of the usual pious glow. Instead, it’s cold, crisp, and almost claustrophobic, trading the spiritual for the political.

Berger, coming off the visceral, mud-caked intensity of his *All Quiet on the Western Front*, pivots here to a completely different kind of battlefield. Where that film was about the physical erasure of human life, *Conclave* is about the preservation of an idea, and the desperate, messy ways men try to control it. The setting is the Vatican, but it’s stripped of its tourist-brochure beauty. The hallways are shadows; the rooms are velvet-draped cages.



The film centers on Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes with a kind of brittle, weary brilliance. Fiennes has spent so much of his career playing men who are either dangerously unhinged or aristocratically detached, so it’s refreshing to see him here as a man who is simply exhausted. He’s the dean of the college, the man responsible for the smooth operation of the conclave, and his face—all sharp angles and tired eyes—becomes the map of the film’s moral crisis. He doesn't want the job; he wants the truth. But truth is the one thing the Vatican seems allergic to in this script.

It helps that the film operates with a sense of delicious, conspiratorial glee. We see the factions form: the traditionalist, the progressive, the moderate, the one who just wants to keep the ship afloat. They aren't characters in a theological debate; they’re players in a political campaign, complete with whispered deals, shredded documents, and the sharp sting of betrayal. It reminded me, strangely, of *The West Wing*, if the West Wing were run by men in red cassocks who were terrified of being found out. As *The Guardian’s* Peter Bradshaw astutely noted, the film "relishes the ecclesiastical politics of it all, the delicious, high-stakes maneuvering."



There is a moment—a pivotal, quiet moment—where Lawrence is sitting alone in his quarters, the weight of a secret pressing down on him. The camera lingers on his hands. He’s fiddling with a pen, or perhaps just his own fingers, the movement frantic, barely contained. It’s such a small, human detail. In a place of such rigid, ancient structure, the human body is the only thing that actually betrays the truth. His physical nervousness cuts through the grandiosity of the Sistine Chapel. It reminds us that for all the pomp, this is just a room full of old men, scared of losing their grip.

Isabella Rossellini, appearing as the seemingly quiet Sister Agnes, offers a counterpoint to the men’s thundering egos. She doesn’t have much dialogue, and that’s the point. She’s the observer. Her presence is a reminder of the thousands of invisible women whose labor keeps the institution turning, even as they are barred from the room where the decisions are made. She watches the men maneuver with a silent, devastating intelligence. It’s a performance of restraint that tells you more than a monologue ever could.



Does it all hold together? Mostly. The third act takes a turn into thriller territory that might be a bit too neat for some. I found myself wishing it stayed in the mud of moral ambiguity a little longer, rather than offering the twist it eventually delivers. But maybe that’s the nature of the genre. You can only maintain that kind of tension for so long before you have to resolve it.

When the smoke finally clears, you’re left with the image of a church that is, like all human institutions, fragile. It’s built on mystery and ritual, but it’s run by people who are as flawed and desperate as the rest of us. Watching Fiennes navigate the hallways, trying to keep his integrity while everything around him collapses, felt like watching a man try to hold back the tide with a spoon. It’s a deeply cynical movie, but strangely, I left it feeling a bit of empathy for those lost in the red robes. We’re all, in our own way, trying to find a faith to believe in, even when the people selling it are just as confused as we are.