Conclave: 'These cardinals all have phones, they vape, they smoke'
L-R: Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence and Stanley Tucci as Cardinal Bellini in Conclave.
The Pope is dead. Now comes one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events, the papal conclave, in which the Catholic College of Cardinals gather to elect a new pope and begin a new era of the Church.
Not much is known about what goes on behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel when the conclave is in session, but Edward Berger’s film Conclave imagines the tension, bureaucracy, twists and turns that come when the most powerful leaders of the Catholic Church gather to vie for leadership.
“We had quite a few political and religious advisors who took us behind those doors and said: ‘This is what we know about the Conclave’. Obviously, no Cardinal was speaking to us,” reveals Berger, who also directed All Quiet On The Western Front.
“They spoke to us about other things, but once the door closed, they can’t reveal what’s going on there, the conversations. So we make those up, and we create a reality that is believable for us, and hopefully for the audience.”
Tasked with the sacred duty of overseeing the conclave is Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes. Known for roles such as Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter film series and M in James Bond films Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time To Die, Fiennes says he was drawn to the role of Lawrence because of his “internal conflict”.
Lawrence struggles with his conscience and doubts his own purpose, and we see him grapple with his faith and the role he plays in the Church, particularly as shocking revelations come to light and the cardinals tussle over the direction they believe the Church should take in its new era. Despite his piety and reverence, Cardinal Lawrence is brimming with a humanity that Fiennes enjoyed delving into.
“I like characters that have some internal conflict. I think that’s always interesting,” says the 61-year-old actor of his role in a film that had its Irish premiere at the recent Cork International Film Festival. “And he is a man we understand. He’s a man who’s in a relatively powerful position, he’s a dean of the Vatican, and suddenly he’s responsible for the running of the conclave. But also, we know that he says… ‘I had hoped to go to a monastery’. So I think he has that conflict about wishing for a simpler, more monastic life, and sometimes in the whirligig of the world, I understand the impulse to go and be sequestered away in a more meditative way of life… “I think I had a foothold into that kind of dilemma, that someone like that might go through.”
As the conclave begins, several front-runners emerge. Cardinal Bellini, played by Stanley Tucci, Cardinal Tremblay, played by John Lithgow, Cardinal Tedesco, played by Sergio Castellitto, and Cardinal Adeyemi of Nigeria, played by Lucian Msamati, who could become the first African pope in history, are all contenders – and each has his own agenda, as well as his own compromising secrets.
“We look at the cardinals and we might think they’re pious men, they’re holy, and they’re studious men… This is what they dedicated their life to, and it’s a big dedication,” says Berger.
“But underneath it, I think everyone is the same. We’re all fallible, we all sin, we all make mistakes… We all feel our shortcomings and know our shortcomings. And these cardinals too.
“These cardinals all have phones, they vape, they smoke. The Pope ends up in a plastic body bag in the back of an ambulance and gets sort of jumbled around, like, all of us will end up there, you know. I wanted to bring that world down to us and make it feel like we could be in it. They’re just like us, and they’re as fallible as we are.”
While being a film about ancient traditions, many of the issues that Conclave grapples with are noticeably pertinent to modern life. Based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris, Conclave drip-feeds us a progressive series of secrets, scandals, machinations and manipulations, showing that not only are these holy men not always behaving in the most righteous of ways, but that they – like all of us – are driven by their personal desires and judgements, their longing to take the Church forward with more liberal ideas, or to return it to what they see as its former glory.
“It’s always a pertinent theme to explore, but it just happens to coincide with where we are now,” notes The Hunger Games’ Stanley Tucci, 64, who plays a cardinal vying for the papacy with liberal views.
“I mean, (when) Robert Harris wrote this book… Those movements were already in place, that moving to the far right. But now we’re reaching, not a pinnacle, but it’s getting stronger and stronger, that movement. So I think for that reason, the film is very timely… “Any institution, particularly one that is as ancient as the Catholic Church, so much of which is founded on, let’s say, hearsay, and ideas of Christianity, I think that there are always going to be those extreme factions, and those who want to move, perhaps, farther left in order to make the religion more relevant to people today.”
By the story’s very nature, Conclave’s cast is full of impressive male actors. However, Berger’s film does not underestimate the impact of women in the Catholic Church, and the character of Sister Agnes, played by esteemed Italian actress Isabella Rossellini, 72, challenges the tradition that a woman’s voice has no place and no influence.
“I’ve seen it in my life, often, that women that don’t speak or are submissive actually can have a lot of authority,” says Rossellini.
“Not only the nuns – and I went to a nun school – but even models, models are supposed to be beautiful, be beautiful and shut up… But still, they can be very powerful. There is a way of exuding authority, and even a moral authority, even if you don’t have words.
“That’s what I thought was the most attractive (part) of this character.”
- Conclave comes to cinemas on Friday, November 29
