Road to the Oscars Review: ‘Conclave’ Highlights the Hypocrisy and Dysfunction of the Catholic Church

Every year, in the time between when the Academy Award nominations are announced and the actual Oscars ceremony is held, OFM movie reviewer and associate editor Julie River tries to watch all the movies nominated for Best Picture that year. In the years since the pandemic, this has become easier, as a lot move of the movies are now available on streaming.

Last year was the first year since they expanded the number of Best Picture nominees from five to 10 that River managed to make it through all 10 nominated films, and as she did so, she wrote reviews of them for OFM. This year, she aims to do it again, watching all 10 nominated films and writing about them for this site. She already saw and reviewed Emilia Pérez and I’m Still Here as part of her coverage of this year’s 47th Annual Denver Film Festival. That leaves her with eight films to watch and review. Can she make it through all 10 films again? Find out on OFM’s Road to the Oscars!

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I was raised Catholic. While my parents were somewhat lukewarm Catholics themselves, my father having gone through a divorce before he met my mom that the Church refused to recognize, my grandparents were very concerned that I be raised Catholic and I ended up spending six years in Catholic school. I always joke that there’s nothing that can ensure someone grows up to be an atheist quite like spending six years in Catholic school. For whatever good the Church does, it’s balanced against a long and shameful history of bloodshed, bigotry, and oppression. Edward Berger’s masterful film, Conclave, looks at the hypocrisy of the Church and demonstrates the rampant corruption that runs through the clergy. But in the end, it’s a reminder of what the Church should be, and an ideal that it will never live up to.

Conclave opens right after the death of the Pope, as the leaders of the Church converge to decide what to do next. Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), a fairly liberal cardinal from the UK, is tasked with leading the conclave, the assembly of cardinals that must come together to elect a new pope. The conclave immediately finds itself with a few surprising situations, such as the arrival of Cardinal Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a Mexican clergy member who the late Pope had secretly made a cardinal the year before so he could work for the Church in Afghanistan. The frontrunners for pope include Cardinal Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a conservative and traditionalist Italian Cardinal who is likely to undo most of the progressive reforms in the church from the past few decades, Cardinal Joshua Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), a Nigerian cardinal who is also very conservative, Cardinal Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), a moderate Canadian cardinal, and Cardinal Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), an American cardinal who is one of the most liberal cardinals in the Church and who is trying desperately to keep Tedesco from being elected. However, as the doors are sealed and the men come together to make their decision, Lawrence finds himself investigating the scandals in the lives of his fellow Cardinals as one by one, the leading candidates are knocked out of the race by the skeletons in their closet. When the dust settles, who will be left standing to lead the Church?

Ralph Fiennes, perhaps most famous for playing Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter films, plays Lawrence as a humble and idealistic man who believes in church reform. One of the best scenes from him is the one in which he delivers the opening homily for the conclave and warns his fellow cardinals against the “sin of certainty” and says he hopes for a pope who doubts himself rather than one who believes with certainty that he knows everything. I thought this was a brilliant speech considering that I really do believe that the refusal to entertain doubts is one of the biggest problems of any organized religion. Rather than facing doubts head-on, I feel like religious fundamentalists would rather bury their doubts and overcompensate for those doubts rather than confront the fact that they do have doubts.

It was hard not to see this as one of the most timely of the Best Picture nominees, considering that the Oscars are now coming up around the same time that Pope Francis is struggling with his health and many believe that he is likely to die soon. Francis has a reputation of being the “liberal Pope,” but much of that comes from effective PR that makes sure his more progressive statements get more attention in the press. For every kind thing that Francis has said about LGBTQ+ people, he’s said something equally offensive about the community as well. Just last year, Francis called “gender ideology” (which basically just means the existence of trans people) an “ugly ideology of our time.” Here’s hoping that, when the two-faced Francis passes, the Church will, indeed, elect a new pope who doubts himself rather than believing with the utmost certainty that he is right in preaching hate and discrimination against queer people.

In a strange parallel to Conclave, the race for the Best Picture Oscar has seen a few of the former frontrunners for the award knocked out of contention over controversy, allowing some unlikely candidates a chance at taking home the coveted prize. Following the utter implosion of Emilia Pérez’s Oscar campaigning due to the offensive tweets from its star, Karla Sofía Gascón, as well as the controversy surrounding The Brutalist’s use of AI to enhance performances, both of those films seem much less likely to win Best Picture than they seemed to be about a month ago. Even though the Vegas odds* for Best Picture currently have Anora in the lead, there’s a lot of people who think Conclave is still the safer bet. As much as I would prefer to see Anora take home Best Picture, I appreciate Conclave continuing to be in the conversation because it deserves to be.

Ralph Fiennes is also up for Best Actor, but that award is really a race between Adrian Brody and Timothée Chalamet, so I don’t see Fiennes picking up that award, as good as his performance was. Isabella Rossellini is inexplicably up for a Best Supporting Actress award for this film as well, which is baffling, as I felt her character was fairly minor and inconsequential to the story without any really meaty moments for Rossellini to show off her acting chops. Regardless, the odds have her as a very unlikely candidate for that award, so it’s a moot point, but I feel like there are other actresses who deserved that nomination even more. Conclave is also up for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the Vegas odds seem to have it as the lock for that award, which would make for a nice consolation prize if the film doesn’t win Best Picture.

While Conclave initially turned me off because I perceived it as being too steeped in organized religion, it’s not really a film that ends up glorifying the Church. Rather, it demonstrates the deeply flawed nature of the Church and demonstrates how compromise between warring factions leads to slow progress. The Church remains an institution stuck in the past that’s scared to come into the future and, while the fictional version of the Catholic Church in this movie eventually makes a rather progressive decision, it’s clear that nothing like that will ever come out of the real Catholic Church.

Rating: 92/100

*I’m going to be referring to the Vegas odds on the Oscars because I think they’re a handy guide to gauge the likelihood of a film winning a particular award, but I do want to emphasize that betting on the Oscars is not legal in the state of Colorado, and this is just something I bring up for fun in my predictions. We are not endorsing anyone gambling on the Oscars in an area where it isn’t legal.

Conclave is still playing in some theaters and you can look up showtimes here. It’s also streaming on Peacock.

All photos courtesy of Facebook