When I left the movie house after watching Conclave for the first time I felt a kind of elation. I was delighted simply by having seen so well crafted a product. Conclave deserved its host of nominations. I enjoyed a second viewing more than the first. I find that often happens. Maybe familiarity helps me step back and see it more critically, looking at how the team technically achieved their affects, and there is the added pleasure of anticipation of knowing what will happen next.
Being a Christian Minister of the Liberal persuasion (far too liberal for many I am sure) my deepest appreciation of Conclave came from its explicit theology. I looked in the Robert Harris source novel to find 13 lines of Cardinal Lawrence’s homily on the essential need for doubt, and the way certainty is always exclusive, and so the mortal enemy of unity.
I am of course aware of the opposition of conservatives in and beyond the Catholic Church to Conclave, with many voices calling it ‘Liberal propaganda' . Interesting the way the word propaganda is used by some to decry attitudes they do not agree with. And ironic, as it originally referred to propagating the Church's own teachings abroad, via the College of Propaganda set up in the 17th by Pope Gregory XV. So conservatives of any denomination calling this book/film 'liberal‘propaganda’ may not know their own history.
‘Harris says that he was inspired to write a novel about papal politics while watching coverage of the 2013 papal conclave. At that time, he was working on his Cicero Trilogy, a series of novels set during the Roman Republic, and the papal electors reminded him of the Roman Senate. He consulted Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as part of his research for the book. He later gave Murphy-O'Connor a copy of the novel, and to his surprise, Murphy-O'Connor sent a letter praising its accuracy.’ Wiki.
I have seen Ralph Fiennes in three movies this year, starting with Conclave, then reuniting with Juliette Binoche 28 years after The English Patient in The Return, and coinicdentaly in 28 Years Later, playing respectively a Roman Catholic Cardinal, Odysseus and a post-apocalyptic Doctor. He has also filmed the second volume of 28 Years Later, to be released in January 2026. At the moment (early July 2025) he is on stage in Bath in a David Hare play, Grace Pervades, and directing All’s Well That Ends Well which will run in the same theatre in August. What a busy man!
