Robert Harris specialises in thrillers that guarantee their interest by offering startling perspectives on world-historical events. After writing five impressively reported works of non-fiction, his first novel Fatherland (1992) boldly imagined a world in which Hitler won. It was followed by Enigma (the breaking of the code), Archangel (Stalin leaving a terrifying identikit son), and Pompeii (boom).
Altogether he has published 16 novels, some quasi-factual accounts of global turning-points, such as Munich (Chamberlain defended), and, this autumn, Precipice (Asquith’s wartime affair). They’re all well-crafted, thoroughly researched and highly readable, although not rewarding to revisit until completely forgotten. Eight have been adapted for cinema, including two (one about Tony Blair, the other about the Dreyfus affair) by Roman Polanski.
His 2016 novel Conclave imagines the election of the next pope by 118 cardinals sequestered for four days, the voting changing constantly as astonishing scandals and conspiracies are uncovered, while the progressives and conservatives battle. Harris was alerted to the subject by watching TV coverage of the 2013 conclave which elected Pope Francis and realising the faces of the cardinals resembled those of politicians, not clerics. His interest is always in the specific processes of power. Spirituality, not so much.
Conclave has now been brilliantly translated to the big screen. It’s high entertainment, all components expertly marshalled. The tight script is by Peter Straughan whose previous work includes Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Wolf Hall, intrigues that Conclave sometimes resembles. The director is Edward Berger, who won an Oscar for All Quiet on the Western Front and also directed the excellent series Patrick Melrose. The French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine (Jackie, Ammonite) makes everything look amazing, from close-ups to vistas. The colours, the costumes, the sets are splendid. A discordant score by composer Volker Bertelmann (aka Hauschka) often seems to comment derisively on events. The production feels more indie European than bloated Hollywood.
Yet it’s an actor’s film; the conclave one big stage. Ralph Fiennes as the hero Lawrence, dean of the College of Cardinals, gives one of his all-time best performances. Anglicised from the equivalent character in the novel but speaking Italian when needs be, Lawrence acts as a detective in this gigantic closed-room mystery, a perplexed, unwilling Poirot in the Vatican. Fiennes’s stark features are expressive of his inner turmoil, nearly imperceptible twitches of eyebrow conveying the emotions he is trying so hard to master. John Lithgow is terrific as the cultivated, ambitious Canadian candidate for the papacy, Tremblay of Montreal. Lithgow has a genius for suddenly revealing real nastiness behind his geniality. As the progressive candidate, Cardinal Bellini, Stanley Tucci exerts familiar charm; his reactionary rival, Tedesco of Venice, is made wonderfully brash by the Italian star Sergio Castellitto.
That women feature less can be blamed more on the Catholic Church than the film-makers. Isabella Rossellini nonetheless makes considerable impact as the formidable senior nun, Sister Agnes. “Although we sisters are supposed to be invisible, God has nonetheless given us eyes and ears,” she says, launching into a startling address, before making a quick curtsey to the men she has just bowled over.
No less inspired is the casting (by Nina Gold, always the best) of the surprise candidate, Cardinal Benitez of Kabul. He’s played by Carlos Diehz, 53. Mexican by birth, living in Vancouver, Diehz works in an architectural practice, and only took up acting in 2020, as an interest after his children had left home. His reserve and delicacy, even his nervousness among all these world-class scenery chewers, work perfectly for the part. A newcomer is exactly what was needed here.
Though we see Lawrence wracked by doubts about the Church he serves, Conclave has nothing to say about faith. It’s an exposition of the way power works, how it depends on chance as well as machination. The structure of a papal election, successive votes coming quickly one after another, is a perfect prefab template for a thriller plot. The film moralises more than the novel, contextualising the final jaw-dropper as admirably progressive, rather than just a walloping shock. Curiously, the clinical details involved here are precisely reversed from the source text. But hush – the less you know, the more you’ll be entertained.
“Conclave” is in cinemas from 29 Nov
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This article appears in the 27 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The Optimist’s Dilemma