One of the highlights of novelist Robert Harris’s career is undoubtedly the 2016 Vatican election thriller Conclave. Now, nearly a decade later, it has come to the big screen and wow, has it ever come big… Conclave, directed by Edward Berger, is lush with the opulence and somberness of the Vatican, enriched by the intense, close-up cinematography of Stéphane Fontaine and a memorable soundtrack. The plot, in which we become rapidly immersed, is simple: the Pope has died and a cardinal (played with awesome veracity and force by Ralph Fiennes) must manage a complicated, sequestered process of all the cardinals voting for a new pope, iteration after iteration until a 75% majority agrees. It turns out there is as much or more intrigue and deceit among the holy cardinals as in a mafia movie, and Robert Harris’s book, and this film, unwind the plot twists with consummate care. Besides Fiennes, the actors are superb, with a special mention going to Carlos Diehz as a somewhat mystifying late entrant cardinal. Conclave is a memorable two-hour-long viewing experience.
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