Conclave (2025) – Oh Lord

Released: 9th January
Seen: 2nd February

When a pope dies there is a process that has to be done in order to select a new pope known as a Papal Conclave. The basic idea is that all eligible cardinals come to Rome where they are sequestered in a large room and vote on the next pope. They do this repeatedly over and over again until someone has a two-thirds majority and then they become the new pope. The cardinals are not meant to interact with the outside world during this process and each time a vote happens the votes are burned and the colour of the smoke tells the outside world that there’s a new pope. This feels like the kind of thing that was meant to be turned into a political thriller and thanks to Conclave it has been… it’s good, it’s very good, honestly, there’s not much more that can be said than that but I’ll try.

Conclave begins with a dead pope (already an iconic opening) and because of that, it’s time to begin the conclave. The conclave itself is being led by Dean Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) who has the hard job of making sure everything runs smoothly for the vote to take place without letting the outside world influence anything. What’s making this harder for the Dean is that one of the potential nominees for Pope is his good friend and loud liberal Cardinal Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci) who is, reluctantly, trying to beat moderate and problematic Cardinal Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow) and traditionalist and seemingly intolerant Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) to the job. The issues of the Conclave are made even greater when a little-known cardinal Cardinal Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz) arrives out of nowhere, then a mysterious nun who can reveal things about one cardinal’s past and the final discussion that the Pope had with anyone might just blow everything up… oh right, and then there’s just things blowing up outside, this Conclave is getting messy.

What makes Conclave hard to talk about is that it is about as close as a piece of art will ever get to being objectively good. Every element of this film is doing a good job, the script is tight and well-paced, its cinematography is well thought out and filled with some lovely imagery, and the performances are universally good by well-known legendary character actors who are completely committed. Every single element of this film is working hard and delivering…. The problem is that they’re all delivering everything at a 7 out of 10 for the entire film with no real peaks or valleys to be seen. Being consistent is a pretty good thing to be, it’s better for a film to be consistently good than consistently bad and this film is good at all times but the problem that creates is that it doesn’t let any moments stand out from the crowd which makes it hard to talk about in any interesting way.

There are several points in Conclave where you can tell that what’s happening is meant to be a big important beat, something that changes the course of events going on but it’s all played the same way. An explosion is treated the same as someone getting upset at dinner which is treated the same as someone expressing bigoted viewpoints. Each moment is played dryly, carefully, with minimal music and a lot of carefully framed takes that barely move unless absolutely essential. There are no moments where the film is pushing you to gasp in shock or feel anything greater than “oh, that’s interesting” which makes for a film that’s good but holds itself back from greatness, it’s playing it safe at all times because it’s playing around in religious waters and wants to keep from offending anyone (OK it somehow offended Megyn Kelly but she doesn’t count because she’s an absolute idiot)

It’s here I want to stress that Conclave is a good movie, very good in fact. It’s not a shock that this film has 8 Oscar nominations because everyone is bringing it. Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci in particular absolutely carry the film with the kind of ease you only get with decades in the business, their scenes together are captivating and both of them deserve the endless praise they’ve gotten. Every actor in Conclave is truly great, it’s a wonderfully diverse cast who play off each other well and deliver the dialogue with the gravitas required to make it work… but do they stand out? As I type this paragraph it’s been a few hours since I finished the film and try as I might I cannot remember a single moment where I was enthralled, saw a moment of a performance where I went “Oh that was incredible”, it was all good but not memorable.

What makes that lack of memorability annoying is that Conclave does have the potential to really go for certain topics. An election between a liberal, a centrist and a right-wing idealogue is the kind of thing we need badly now, especially considering how global politics seems to keep marching in a direction that resembles 1930’s Germany. Using the election of the pope to comment on the political world would be interesting and fun but Conclave doesn’t get to do that (it tries but never quite gets there). It’s taking these loaded topics and playing them all with the same weight which makes it hard to latch onto anything. There’s maybe one moment when the film actually leans into the drama and involves a moment of bigotry so blunt and obvious that it’s impossible not to make it stand out. 

Conclave is still a good film, visually stunning and well performed but it’s the kind of good film that washes over you and doesn’t linger around for that long. It’s good enough that it’ll be hard to find anyone truly offended by it but it’s also hard to believe this would be anyone’s favourite film. It’s the kind of film that’s so middle ground that it’ll probably do well at the Oscars because Best Picture has ranked choice voting and this feels destined to be everyone’s third or fourth choice for that award. It’s fine, it’s cool, it’s a film that you can watch and enjoy but will forget it shortly afterwards.