NEW YORK – Robert Harris had just completed a trilogy of novels about Cicero when he watched the election of Pope Benedict live on television. As a chronicler of power and its mutations, the scene — the Sistine Chapel smoke signaling a decision, of course, but also the whole, secretive tableaux — fascinated him.
“Just before the pope comes out onto the balcony and reveals himself, the windows on either side fill up with the faces of the cardinal electors who had come to watch him,” Harris says. “And the camera pans along the faces — elderly, crafty, cunning, some benign, beatific. And I thought: My god, that’s the Roman senate. That’s the old men running the whole institution. I thought: There must be stories here.”
That stoked Harris to write “Conclave,” a 2016 novel that went inside the Vatican to imagine how “the ultimate election,” as he calls it — with the added intrigue that the contenders must pretend they don’t want to win — might unfold.
As page-turning as Harris made his novel, it might not have seemed the stuff of Hollywood. A bunch of old men in robes sitting inside and picking a pontiff is not your average elevator pitch. But director Edward Berger’s adaptation, starring Ralph Fiennes as the cardinal leading the conclave, manages to be that rare thing in today’s movie industry: a riveting, thoughtful, adult-oriented drama acted out through dialogue by a sterling ensemble.
“Yeah, we used to have ’em. A lot. We don’t really have ’em anymore,” says Stanley Tucci, who co-stars as Cardinal Bellini. “You have people who have been doing this for a long time, so it’s a very mature film. If you take all of our ages and add them up, well, I don’t want to know what the number is.”
“Conclave,” which Focus Features releases in theaters Friday, has already been drafted into a runoff of its own. The film, Berger’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is considered a top Academy Awards contender, including Fiennes for what would be his third nomination. (He’s never won.) In a Hollywood that years ago lost belief in the mid-budget adult drama, can “Conclave” restore the faith?
“Conclave” wasn’t made with the Vatican’s involvement; it was shot at the legendary Rome studio Cinecittà. The film, made for about $20 million and scripted by Peter Straughan, is primarily a procedural, albeit one with a spiritual dimension.
“I wanted to make it like ‘All the President’s Men,’” says Berger. “It was my opportunity to make a film like a political thriller from the ’70s — for Ralph to feel claustrophobic, to sit in a dark room and all we hear is the hum of a fluorescent light and his breath.”
To a large degree, it’s a movie that resides on Fiennes’ face. His Cardinal Lawrence spends much of the film listening, strategizing and searching — himself as much as anyone else — as he weighs rapidly shifting allegiances and uncovered secrets. The smoke of “Conclave,” you might say, is in close-ups of Fiennes, a master of the subtle shifts of expression.
“When you know the camera is on you and it’s close, that’s when you know your inner world has to speak,” Fiennes says.
It’s a talent that Fiennes has honed through genuine investigation. He recalls watching BBC’s “Face to Face” to study how faces shift when asked probing questions. For an acting workshop, he once told students to interview themselves, and watch the facial responses. “What does the human face do in real life that an actor can learn from?” Fiennes says.
Tucci and Fiennes have sporadically worked together (“Maid in America,” “The King’s Man”), but after plans fizzled for Tucci to direct Fiennes in a film about George Bernard Shaw, they sought a more substantial collaboration. Tucci’s scenes are almost entirely with Fiennes. The rest of the cast includes Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow and Brían F. O’Byrne.
“It made me really love acting again,” Tucci says, speaking from home in London. “Not that I didn’t love it, but you sort of start to burn out after a while. After 42 years, you’re like, ‘Why am I still doing this?’ You have those times where you question. And then this is like, ‘Oh that’s it. There you go.’”
Doubt, itself, is a major theme in “Conclave.” When Lawrence first speaks to the assembled cardinals, he makes the case that doubt, not certainty, should guide their search for a new pope. As the film continues, Lawrence’s predicament weighs increasingly heavily on his faith in the church. It’s the aspect of the character with which Fiennes most connected.
“As you get older, I have more doubts,” Fiennes says. “What does anything mean? I don’t know what anything means. What is the value of what I do? I don’t know. I have an impulse to follow a scene, to choose a project — what’s its meaning?”
“I just think: Things emerge and I like to let things come to me,” he continues. “Let accident be apt, you know? There are people in this business who develop stuff. ‘I want to play this part. I want to make this film with this director.’ That’s fine. I’ve done that and I may do that a bit more. But I feel more and more: What’s round the corner that I don’t know about?”
But sliding into Lawrence proved a natural fit, even when it came to the vestments. In preparation, Fiennes was allowed to try on a real cardinal’s clothes. He liked the feeling.
“The truth is skirts are quite comfortable,” Fiennes says. “Our clothes in the film are made of a heavier fabric and quite a lot of skirtage to maneuver.”
“You feel quite strong in them,” he adds. “You feel quite powerful.”
The 61-year-old isn’t inclined to indulge in the Oscar talk, though. When asked, he gently demurred, agreeing instead with Berger, who sat beside him during a recent interview in New York, that he’d let the film speak for itself. That is, of course, the way Lawrence might respond to someone saying he should be pope.
“I don’t think many actors, movie stars, can convey intelligence and a kind of suffering humility quite the way he can,” says Harris.
The film is also laced with quandary over the role of women in what Berger describes as “the oldest patriarchal institution in the world.” The twists and turns of “Conclave” ultimately arrive at what would be an earthquake of a development for the Catholic Church.
“I would absolutely love to screen it for the Vatican. We’ve shown it to Catholic organizations and priests,” says Berger. “I know from the cardinals we spoke to, they all said, ‘We’re all going to be watching your movie.’”
As Harris neared publication, he received a letter from the then British cardinal, the late Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. Having recently rummaged through his office, Harris digs out the letter and reads it. (In the book, the main character is called Cardinal Lomeli.)
“Before the reviews come flooding forth, I wanted to write and say how much I enjoyed ‘Conclave,’” Harris reads. “You certainly did your homework. I particularly admired your depiction of Cardinal Lomeli as a cardinal the likes of which all we cardinals would wish to be: holy, subject to doubts, intelligent, humane and totally loyal to the church. Well done.”
He concluded: “As to the startling ending, I said to myself: After all, it’s only a novel.”
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