A Review of Conclave
The bishop of Rome is dying.
Much as Americans often find themselves in rapt attention to the lives of the British royal family, many Protestants feel the need to opine on papal politics despite knowing nothing about it. We disparage the Roman church for its superstition and backwardness but also understand there is a horrifying greatness to it — sure, it belongs to America in the manner that everything on the European continent could be said to belong to us, but there’s this creeping suspicion that its bureaucracy could break free of ours any moment and carry on without us, as it has for thousands of years. Or even worse, that it could extend its corrupt tentacles of ritual across the ocean and supplant the Protestant churches here, themselves in an advanced state of decay.
Protestant churches in America today may have elite cachet as mainline denominations but deny full belief in the scriptures. For those evangelicals professing belief, they fail to cultivate the institutions of elite formation necessary to capture and retain men of cultural force. Thus the specter of Romanist subversion looms once again in the imagination of American nativists as young Protestant men of literary and political ambition find themselves subaltern in every elite conservative institution, beholden to the influence of the papist mafia or other ethno-religious enclaves. Look no further than our vice president, J.D. Vance, born into American poverty but elevated to glory by associating himself with elitist Catholic (and Hindu) rings of power. Mr. Vance is, of course, doing a heroic service to our nation with his public rhetoric as of late, but nevertheless, the imprint of Rome upon his life story leaves young Protestant patriots with a sense of unease if he is to be heir to the emerging MAGA technocracy. Likewise, we find ourselves deeply encouraged by his willingness to be caught in public disagreement with the Pope, as so many great statesmen of the catholic faith have done over the centuries.
Before his health took a turn for the worse, Francis was navigating a politically sensitive moment. Earlier this month, he issued an extraordinary rebuke of United States Vice President JD Vance’s characterization of Ordo Amoris, a theological concept relating to love that Vance used to justify President Donald Trump’s migrant policy. The papal pushback triggered fury from the White House, raising the prospect of a highly politicized succession battle should Francis die. “They’ve already influenced European politics, they’d have no problem influencing the conclave,” said one close observer of Vatican politics, referring to the Trump administration. “They might be looking for someone less confrontational.”
It is striking, then, that this real life development coincides with the recent release of Conclave, a lauded adaptation of a 2016 novel by Robert Harris, depicting the palace intrigue surrounding the fictional succession of a pope. Modern Romanism presents such a rich tableau for Hollywood dramas — it comes built-in with paradoxes of medieval and modern, an expansive visual iconography, and various priestly stock characters; it has its demons, it has its exorcists. The film industry, sadly, has never had this regard for the Protestant church; for whatever reason, the industry exhibits a keen disinterest in much of the actual drama that can be found across the American landscape. Perhaps power struggles in megachurch board rooms or backwoods chapels would simply be less sexy. No one ever seems to call an Episcopalian exorcist in the movies.
Conclave is a near-perfect film; that is if you are looking for a film to lusciously illustrate all of the things sick and decayed in our global society. As a movie, it has a beautiful veneer but a rotten heart, which is fitting given the subject matter: the OG NGO, the Roman Catholic Church.
There are occasional issues with the film’s art. Certain lines come across as stale or unrehearsed; it can have clumsy lines, stumbling to get all the information across rapidly to an audience. There are a few embarrassing moments, such as when the strong-willed nun speaks up to all the cardinals in the cafeteria and tells them what’s what or when the blandest liberal platitudes are taken at face value. Thankfully, the film is sophisticated enough that it asks us to be suspicious of those who utter such platitudes — as long as they have white skin.
But on the whole, from a purely artistic standpoint, Conclave demonstrates cinematic mastery.
Right from the get-go, we are confronted with things unworldly and worldly in sharp succession. We witness Latin chanting, the breaking of a ring, the setting of a red seal. We see modern medics in their orange suits and mesh body bags invade like aliens into the eerie imperial luxury of the Casa Santa Maria, rendered by the filmmakers like a mausoleum with rippling terrazzo marble and uncanny red doors. The film features an incredible reliance on red throughout, crimson being a color sorely lacking in modern cinema. Using the classic architecture of its surroundings to their fullest extent, Conclave has some of the best visuals I’ve seen in a contemporary drama in years.
Most tasteful is the emphasis on the bureaucracy and proceduralism in the midst of all that is apparently sacred — the construction work being done on the Sistine Chapel, setting up tech for the events, robed nuns working in the stainless steel kitchens, nuns setting silverware… this visually emphasizes the struggle with gravitas we have in the modern age. One feels these old cardinals should be like Jedi masters, who always exist in a state of solemn gravity and understand everything telepathically.
Yet instead, we see robed hierophants lounging on their smartphones, hitting vapes, singing in the toilet, struggling with photocopiers, talking over the buzz of Keurigs in sepulchral living quarters, cabals of bishops gathering in the shadows in what look like movie seats… this last detail is especially poignant symbolism. While described as an aula or lecture hall, from the camera’s perspective, this location — one of the most important recurring locations in the film — looks exactly like the seats of a darkened movie theatre. This is where the real decisions get made.
Ours is an age in which pomp is always dragged through the dirt. This is the humbling effect that the liberal impulse has spread throughout the world. Good, in that it prevents us from being unduly overwhelmed with the glory of earthly things, warding off the temptation to exchange the glory of God for the glory of Rome. But unfortunately, on the other end, it also blinds us with unbelief to genuine transmissions of God’s glory, which is always radiating out through the glorious things of this world: hearts of faith, the faces of the ones we love, the goodness of where God has placed us.
Perhaps the best part of the film is in the Sistine Chapel, where there is a moment of extended silence. The cardinals feel a wind gently blow through a hole in the wall that had been under repair but whose covering Muslim terrorists had blasted off. There are a few seconds of incredible gentleness in the midst of all the palace intrigue, and this suggests that God, in his grace, can make himself known anywhere, even in a place as debauched as the Roman church at the height of its power struggles and its impotence, its bureaucracy and its ceremony. It’s a genuinely beautiful scene. Much of the film is beautiful.
Most of its sins lie below the surface, concerning what it actually believes about reality.
Consider the Italian traditionalist candidate complaining about how the abolition of Latin has led to everyone sequestering back into their national groups; that without Roma, the tradizione of Roma, everything falls apart. He is so worldly, so racist, we are led to believe. He calls for the deportation of Muslims, and everyone boos. Then the Mexican hermaphrodite Pope-to-be stands up and tells us, “The church is not tradition, the past — the church is what we do next.” In this context, “what we do next” refers to accepting infinite foreigners into your country, even as they try to blow you up.
We find ourselves caught along with our main character in a neutered age, encouraged to disbelieve in great ceremony and to disbelieve in quiet time alone. Conclave, through its excellent composition and use of Vatican setpieces, comes closer to having some real grandeur than any Hollywood movie I’ve seen in a while. But ultimately its mission is to convince us to doubt, because only doubt will maintain diversity.
“Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance,” the British manager tells all the cardinals. He is disgusted by their power plays and their racism. His only message is that consummate liberal one: that one must live in uncertainty and doubt for the sake of tolerance. Apparently that is the only way he knows how to keep peace between the different competing ethnic and political tensions.
“Some were chosen to be Shepherds, and some to manage the farm. Apparently, I’m a manager,” the main character tells us. And what is the logical endpoint of this managerialism? Despite all the Renaissance pageantry, the film presents the idea that all of our most sacred ancient institutions are, in fact, carefully calibrated by neurotic British managers installing third-world hermaphrodites into supreme power, almost without realizing what they’re doing. What a fitting symbol for the endpoint of liberalism.
What else is a pastor supposed to do?
The movie, for all of its good taste and good questions, is unable to break from the ethical frame of the managerialism that it criticizes: that is, its moral world is one populated by solemn pious brown-skinned missionaries, scheming nativist reactionaries, and the well-meaning but nervous white liberals caught in between them. The movie is strongest when it bucks against liberal piety, such as depicting Muslim terrorism or portraying an African as capable of sin, but of course, it must inevitably bend itself backward into the veneration of the solemn, pious Mexican hermaphrodite.
Much like the Roman church, this movie has the grandeur of an empty cathedral, something that has the memory of spiritual glory in it, yet is overcome at the last by globalist piety that is terrified more than anything else of regressing back to before the civil rights era. It is a fitting end for both Hollywood and the Roman church: that centuries of unbelieving proceduralism and Machiavellian striving produce only sterility and doubt. A vessel of global communication that can say nothing. They can only convey a message of diversity, held together by doubt, and not the gospel preached with certainty. We are scared to see what would happen if they began to say anything more substantive. Is it for the best that these institutions of global influence grow weak and uninspiring?
Regardless, we feel in our hearts there’s a need for something more. Tradition? Nativism? Maybe, if there’s truth and life in it. But even more than those ideals — we need the inspiration of the Spirit of God.
For the past hundred years the global magisterium has been not in Rome but in Hollywood, that is, the bureaucracy that teaches everyone the bounds of moral truth. The ones who tell the story. Perhaps only now do we see its power dwindling. Conclave is a testament to the fact that not all of Hollywood’s powers of visual enchantment are dead, as I’ve been led to suspect. But like all liberal narratives, it hovers nervously over a vast abyss of doubt — all it has to offer against the fury of the traditionalist or the nativist is moral bluster. All it knows for certain is the mystical veneration of brown skin.
Say what you will about nativists, but at least it’s an ethos. We shouldn’t be surprised if we get more trad-targeted content coming down the industry pipeline as the mainstream “diversity ethos” just folds into nothingness, and everyone disperses to warring online confessional factions, seeking to get a firm ethical grip on reality. Hollywood may begin to market films that play to these various impassioned kulturkampfs, capitalizing on the allure of traditionalist spectacle, medieval or modern, hunting for something that can deeply enchant us. At the very least, it may lean into the nihilistic vitalism currently in vogue online, a brewing counterculture that rages wild against the agnostic managerialism championed by films such as Conclave. But somehow, I doubt that moviemakers will find their way there until they begin to see more truth in the world. The gospel is a good place to start. Let’s pray the Spirit of God makes the Lord known even in the most unlikely places — whether Los Angeles or the Vatican.
Image Credit: Unsplash
