When I was invited to join the editorial team of “Just Beauty”, I had only recently seen the film “Conclave”, based on the Robert Harris novel of the same name, about the death of a pope and the election of a new one, and I was enthusing about it. I undertook to write a review but then perceived some difficulties.
The plot is convoluted, with a number of exciting and thought-provoking twists and turns, and these twists and turns were what I had most appreciated, and wanted to discuss. But those would be spoilers, and it would be a pretty poor review of a film just out on general release that gave away all its surprises to folk wondering whether they too should go to see it. And yes you should, if you haven’t already. It’s very well worth seeing, and the response of the other audience members as we filed out afterwards was all very positive.
Well, apart from one comment from someone who thought it a pity that there were so few female characters. But for that we have to blame the Roman Catholic Church, and its refusal, so far anyway, to ordain women as priests. The action takes place almost entirely among the all-male college of cardinals eligible to vote, while they are secluded from the outside world either in the Sistine Chapel, where the actual voting takes place, or in the bedrooms and corridors and dining room where they are quartered, where there ARE women, nuns, to feed them and clean their rooms.
The film is shown from the viewpoint of the cardinal (played very sympathetically by Ralph Fiennes) whose job it is to be in charge of the election. One important thread of the plot is the political struggle going on between the more conservative and the more liberal wings of the church, and another is whether the new pope should be chosen from the traditional European Catholic countries, or from the Third World – Asia, Africa, South America – and a different ethnicity, perhaps. The cardinals are sincerely religious, but it soon emerges that they are no saints. They have ordinary everyday human weaknesses, and some have past misdeeds that emerge, and even when they mean well, they are driven by biases and personal ambitions.
I was struck by the film’s relevance to current political issues – and that was before life imitated art and Pope Francis died and we had a real-life papal election occupying the news. I have to say that having seen “Conclave” was quite an advantage in helping me picture what would be occurring behind the scenes. And indeed the same issues came up in discussion of who might be chosen, and what politicking was going on, as the film had explored. And I felt the same exhilaration when the result was announced.
I am not a Catholic myself. Indeed, I am not any sort of Christian or believer in God nowadays, though I was in my later teens, and still feel an emotional attachment to familiar hymns and prayers and passages from the gospels, despite disputing the truth of the doctrines they embody. In fact I identify as a Humanist nowadays, a member of a group of people who define themselves as aspiring to lead lives of virtue and value while not believing in any supernatural Creator or Intervener, or any afterlife.
Why then should it matter to me, in a fictional story or in real life, who gets to be chosen to head the Roman Catholic Church? But it does matter. The Catholic Church is a huge organisation with a great deal of influence worldwide, both on its followers and on political figures who don’t want to antagonise it. When Pope Francis spoke out publicly against JD Vance’s wrongheaded interpretation of the Christian’s duty to others, and talked of Jesus having been a refugee in a foreign land, and when he commended the poor and the dispossessed to the care of his followers, the world listened. And what a contrast it made to the heartless and hypocritical posturing of the current US regime.
When the new Pope Leo was quoted as having shared, in his pre-papal days, strong criticisms of that regime’s policies, and looked set to follow in his predecessor’s footsteps or go even further, I breathed a sigh of relief. In today’s troubled times, when so many powerful people are so dead set on exploiting the poor and helpless and scapegoating them and arousing hatred and persecution against them, we desperately need someone to exert his moral authority in the other direction, and to remind Christians of any denomination what Jesus’s teaching was on this subject.
But even apart from these issues I would recommend Conclave. Some might suppose that they would be bored by a film set in a circumscribed environment, whose tension and excitement came from the moral wrangling, internal and external, of its characters, and their crises of conscience as to what action it was right for them to take. But it was the reverse of boring. It was quite often funny, and also often touching, and very well acted and constructed. Be prepared, if you do go to see it, for certain apparently throwaway lines early on to assume greater significance later.
I’ve tried to steer clear of spoilers here, but maybe enough time has elapsed that those who want to comment on crucial elements of the plot should be free to do so. If so, please start by warning that your comment contains spoilers.
SH
Until recently I too, like Sally, was a member of the Dorset Humanists. I think part of the fascination of the drama for me was the developing idea that without believing in God, I might still be concerned with my spiritual state. By that I would mean my mental and emotional health together with my personal morality and honesty with myself. I am conscious of it as something which goes through better and worse phases in life.
The film poses the question of who is spiritually worthy to be the leader of the Catholic Church – and how do we judge the contenders? (They all incidentally claim that they don’t really want the supreme honour!)
It seems to me that it’s a useful question, to consider the spiritual level of ourselves and others we have dealings with. Our intuition and empathy can often enable us to make a reasonable judgment of where other people are coming from.