Conclave
Director: Edward Berger
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow
Genre: Pope culture
The perfect film has great relevance to current affairs, and Conclave is the perfect example. Not only is the current Pope’s future in doubt (at the time of writing) but the battles between the bishops to become the next Pope in the film are very political – left vs right, woke vs conservative, racism, sexism and discrimination. So, Donald Trump may not like the film, but the now more politically correct Academy members (a controversial issue about a decade ago that has been resolved to some extent) will.
The only complex factor from a viewer’s perspective is the large number of great accomplishments of the actors distracting from their excellent Conclave performances. Ralph Fiennes has starred in lots of famous films and been nominated for many awards: Schindler’s List (1993), The English Patient (1996), The Hurt Locker (2008), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and much more.
John Lithgow is best known for all the TV series he’s starred in such as 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996-2001), Dexter(2009, 2021), The Crown (2016-2019) and Perry Mason (2020). At least Stanley Tucci is a natural Italian speaker with Italian origins who plays Stanley Tucci, so Conclave suits his role very well.
Conclave is the best film I’ve seen that’s been nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this year. It may not be as stylish as The Brutalist, as extreme as The Substance, as epic as Dune: Part Two or as nostalgic as A Complete Unknown, but it is the most enthralling and insightful, not that that means it will win any Academy awards (or maybe did by the time this edition is published)!
Rating: Five sinless sins
