Conclave (2024)

Plot of Conclave: When the pope dies suddenly the 108 cardinals organised by the Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Lawrence, are collected in Rome to elect a new pope. There are front runners, Cardinal Bellini, an American, Cardinal Tremblay, a Canadian, Cardinal Adeyemi, a Nigerian, and Cardinal Tedesco, an Italian and, despite his protests, Cardinal Lawrence himself. Material to subsequent events is the arrival of Cardinal Benitez, a Mexican from Kabul, who had been appointed in secret by the now dead pope. It becomes apparent that all the candidates come with baggage, and all have differing views on the way the church should be administered. The previous pope has been a progressive and the appointment of the new pope will take the church forward (in the view of some) or backwards into more traditional areas.  When a Nigerian nun who had been brought to the conclave as part of the catering team, turns out to have had a child in her youth with the Nigerian candidate, therefore causing his withdrawal, it seems that sinister forces are being deployed.

Content: No sex or nudity, but some of the cardinals smoke.  As well as the cardinals being lined up in their positions in the Sistine Chapel, where we have seen the windows shuttered and the place checked for bugs, some of them meet on the stairs and elsewhere to discuss the politics of the event, and to work out who to support. Lawrence is variously informed by others about events and background, one story was that Tremblay had been asked by the pope to resign. There are terrorist bombs out in the city, although the results are concealed from the cardinals until one blows the windows of the chapel out.  The cardinals vote, and the failure to come to conclusions are broadcast in the smoke from the burning of the voting cards.

A View: This outing has received ticks up from practically all the critics, including those writing in Christian journals, and seems to have made a bit of money.  Surely it will receive some Oscar nominations. Much effort has been taken in the development of the film to make it visually pleasing, and it is. It may come as a bit of a surprise that a hundred identically dressed middle aged men create the same visual effect as a line of identically dressed dancers. And the drama within what is the realistically presented formal process appears to be possible. So a lot of fun. Well worth the cost of a cinema tickets for the target demographic.

Fun Fact:  The film claims that the Nigerian cardinal would, if elected, be the first African pope. Untrue, between 100 AD and 500 AD there had been three African popes.