Conclave (2024) Review: Papal Politics as Page-Turner

Is Conclave worth watching?

Yes, with reservations. Conclave is an elegant, tense and often very funny thriller about a papal election, anchored by one of Ralph Fiennes’s best late-career performances. Edward Berger stages the voting in the Sistine Chapel like a heist film in red silk, and the craft on every level is immaculate. What holds it back is the story underneath: a well-oiled page-turner whose surprises feel engineered rather than earned, and whose cardinals often stand for positions more than they live as people.

What is Conclave about?

When the Pope dies unexpectedly, Cardinal Lawrence (Fiennes) is left to manage the secretive, centuries-old process of choosing his successor. The Church’s most powerful men are sealed inside the Vatican until they reach a decision, and Lawrence, who harbours private doubts about his own faith, becomes the reluctant referee of their ambitions. Before long he suspects that the election is being steered by something closer to a conspiracy than to the Holy Spirit.

The rivals include Stanley Tucci as a liberal ally, John Lithgow as a smooth operator, Lucian Msamati as a popular African contender and Sergio Castellitto as a combative traditionalist. Isabella Rossellini plays the nun who runs the residence where the cardinals are housed. Conclave is a British production in English, adapted from Robert Harris’s novel, and it runs 120 minutes.

Fiennes plays doubt as a full-time job

The film belongs to Fiennes. Lawrence is a manager rather than a mystic, a man who organises ballots, reads files and keeps smiling while the institution he serves shows its worst habits. Fiennes makes that administrative role absorbing, letting fatigue and suspicion show in small adjustments of the face, and his scenes of prayer are among the film’s most private and most troubled moments.

The supporting cast is uniformly strong. Tucci and Lithgow bring a sly, worldly comedy to the politicking, and Castellitto enjoys himself as the loudest man in any room. Rossellini has little screen time but uses it precisely, reminding the cardinals that the people who serve them are paying attention. Peter Straughan’s screenplay, which won the Academy Award for adapted screenplay, is sharpest in these exchanges, where courtesy and knife-work are indistinguishable.

A Vatican built for suspense

Berger, fresh from All Quiet on the Western Front, treats ritual as suspense. Stéphane Fontaine’s camera finds geometric order in rows of scarlet robes, white umbrellas and marble corridors, then lets that order crack whenever a secret leaks. Volker Bertelmann’s score, all scraping strings and pulses, keeps the procedural sections moving, and the counting of ballots becomes as tense as any chase.

The design of the enclosed Vatican, with its tight guest rooms, locked doors and smoke-filled chapel, gives the film its locked-room atmosphere. It looks like prestige cinema, and it plays with the momentum of an airport thriller, which is both its pleasure and its limit.

Where the thriller mechanics show

For all its polish, Conclave is a potboiler in expensive vestments. Revelations arrive on schedule, often through documents conveniently found, and the debate between tradition and reform is laid out so neatly that the cardinals can feel like chess pieces. The final movement pushes hardest for a big statement and will divide viewers: some find it bold, others find it too tidy for a film that spent so long on moral ambiguity. It is gripping in the moment and thinner on reflection.

Who should watch Conclave?

It is an easy recommendation for adults who enjoy dialogue-driven thrillers about institutions and power, and for anyone curious about how a papal election works behind the doors. At two hours it moves briskly. On-screen violence is minimal, though there is some strong language, and its themes of faith, doubt and Church politics may interest older teenagers more than younger viewers. In the US it is streaming on Starz and widely available to rent.

Two natural companions:

• Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick’s study of secret rituals among the powerful, told with a stranger, dreamier chill.
• Oppenheimer, another prestige drama in which the real battles happen in closed rooms and committee votes.

The verdict

Conclave is superbly made and hugely entertaining, a papal thriller carried by Ralph Fiennes’s troubled intelligence and a cast having fun with power. Its twists are more mechanical than profound, which keeps it from the top tier, but as a sleek, adult entertainment it delivers.

Rating: 3.5/5