Conclave Review
Yesterday, I was able to see Conclave, the latest film from Edward Berger. This is one that wasn’t really on my radar, but it’s gotten fantastic reviews and is one of the early Oscar favorites for Best Picture. Obviously, I wanted to see it before awards season and see what’s up. Is this movie any good? Does it deserve all of the Oscar buzz it’s been getting? Let’s get started!
NOTE: There are many things that are worth talking about before I start talking about the movie. First up, this is a religious movie of sorts that deals with Catholics. I’m not a religious person, I’m not Catholic. I feel when discussing a movie like this, that’s important to note. Second, this movie is based on a book that I haven’t read. I actually didn’t know it was based on a book until the credits rolled. My own knowledge of what this movie is about was from the trailer that I saw.
The Good
The absolute best thing about this movie is that it’s a great mystery that keeps giving you new information that makes you reevaluate everything that you’ve seen up to that point in time. Essentially, this movie is about the church that’s electing a new pope and in the process of that, Ralph Fiennes’ character uncovers all of these secrets about the church that shakes the foundation of what they believe in. This movie sets up this series of mysteries that Fiennes’ character is trying to figure out. But once he learns a new piece of information, there’s another mystery that unfolds that leads to a new clue. That then makes somebody else a suspect, you’re constantly changing as to who you think is behind all of this, who's to blame. Even within the last 5-10 minutes, they manage to throw a curveball at you that is very surprising and an interesting note to leave on. This isn’t a murder mystery by any means, but it plays like one in a certain sense. With it having the backdrop of popes and a Catholic Church, it’s something just a bit different telling a story that you wouldn’t expect in this environment.
Another thing this movie does really well is drop you into this world of Catholicism. Like I said, I’m not a Catholic and I’m not super familiar with some of their rituals. I thought this movie did a great job of making you feel part of this world. I was a bit worried that people outside of this religion might feel lost and they might not understand what’s going on. I thought the movie did a great job of making it accessible to everybody, everybody can watch this movie and be deeply invested in the mystery of it all. Even with it taking place 100% at this church, you understand the characters and the world views. All of the characters here are people of faith, therefore they’re hesitant about stuff because it goes against their religion. They’re having to balance listening to their gut, the others around them and what their god wants them to do. In a sense, this movie has great world building because it drops you into this world with these characters, but very quickly you understand their rules, their religion, and the character dynamics.
With this movie you have to talk about the fantastic performances, everybody in this movie does a fantastic job, the three main actors I think are all Oscar worthy. The lead of the movie is Ralph Fiennes, he’s been getting a lot of talk for Best Actor. After seeing the movie, I believe that to be true. I don’t know if he’ll win the Oscar, but he’ll be a name to remember during awards season. Him and Colman Domingo for Sing Sing, are my two favorite performances of the year. What Fiennes needs to do in this movie is capture the complicated nature of this character. Where he’s one of the leaders of this church, that people look up to. But he’s also the one that’s uncovering all of these secrets and mysteries, so he’s using his trust with others as a way to help his investigation. But he’s not manipulating them, he’s doing it for a jerk reason. It’s the type of performance that you need a world class talent like Fiennes in order to portray this complicated yet compelling character. You also have Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow as two other cardinals in this church, once again both of them are world class talents so they’re great in this movie. Both of their characters are very different, but you understand who all of them are based on their world views and how different they are from one other. You also have several other side characters in here, not necessarily played by these big name actors but they’re still great and you remember certain things about them.
Also with this movie you have to talk about Edward Berger as the director. If you don’t know who he is, he’s the director of All Quiet on the Western Front from 2022. I wasn’t as crazy about that movie as it seems like other people were. But it was still very well made and Berger’s direction was fantastic. I think this movie is better and so much of the reason why it works is because of the direction. Berger is having to tell this mystery while explaining all of the rules of this church's different rituals. He’s having to do so much and balance so many things, and he does that wonderfully. He’s able to set up all of these things early on, that you know are going to come back and pay off later on. But he doesn’t have to over explain things, because he did a good job earlier on to make sure the audience knows certain information.
Another thing that is Oscar worthy about this movie is the score. The composer for the film is Volker Bertelsmann who worked with Berger on All Quiet on the Western Front, that was a fantastic score and this is another fantastic score. This is definitely worthy of an Oscar nomination, maybe even an Oscar win. It’s a score that does a fantastic job of fitting the scenes. There’s this theme that plays several times in the movie and it’s used just right at the right moments to build suspense and tension. There’s even sequences where when the score is building, you know what emotions you’re supposed to be feeling.
Finally, the movie has a nice sense of humor about it. It’s by no means a comedy, it’s not like a blockbuster that has a rapid fire pacing of jokes. But there’s a number of solid jokes here that got my audience laughing. They’re little one liners in the movie, mainly from Stanley Tucci that are subtle and perfectly placed in this movie.
The Bad
As you can probably tell I loved this movie, it’s most certainly going to be in my top 5 five of the year. Honestly, I kind of struggled to find issues with this movie. Even the stuff that I’m going to say are pretty minor in the scope of things. I do think at points the pacing was a bit off and it did drag. 90% of this movie does a great job of keeping things moving. There’s about 10% where I thought it was dragging and maybe could have tightened a few things up. It’s really only a couple of scenes, this didn’t really detract from my overall enjoyment of the movie.
The Score: If you’re somebody that loves to keep up to date on Oscar movies, Conclave is one to go see. It is captivating from beginning to end, it keeps you guessing as to what’s going to happen next all throughout the movie. You get three fantastic performances here, Ralph Fiennes is a lock on the Oscar ballot. It’s fantastic, it’s one of 2024’s best movies.
The Score: 9.4/10 (A)
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