I am kicking myself because I couldn’t get to this sooner. A political thriller set against the backdrop of selecting a new pope, famously one of the most secretive and high-stakes elections in modern politics. The cast is top-notch, the screenwriter has a respectable history in cinematic thrillers (as with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in 2011), and the director made that gobsmacking All Quiet on the Western Front adaptation in 2022. Hallelujah, holy shit, what have we got here?

Conclave opens with the death of the pope. It’s not exactly clear how he died, and there are questions as to what exactly happened in his last day alive. Then again, if there were suspicions that the pope was fatally ill, there would certainly be political reasons for withholding that information. Regardless, the throne of the Holy See is now vacant and the cardinals must now figure out who among them will be the next pope. The most prominent candidates are as follows.

• Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) is a bigoted conservative blowhard who wants to take the world and the Catholic Church back to the days of the Crusades.
• Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) wants to make history as the first African pope, but that’ll be tough with his own controversially conservative track record.
• Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) doesn’t seem to have much of any agenda aside from whatever will get him the papacy.
• Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) heads up the progressive wing of the Church. He’s not even in this to win, he just desperately wants the others to lose.

Basically, what we’ve got here is a political allegory about what it takes to be worthy of power. The film is heavily preoccupied with the unfortunate truth that those who most want power are typically and paradoxically those least qualified to have it. The setting further compounds this, as the involved parties are expected to be paragons of virtue and they’re competing to be the spiritual standard-bearer for over a billion people.

The upshot is that we’ve got roughly a hundred old men trying to outmaneuver and backstab each other while maintaining their spotless and pious facades. All of this calls attention to the simple fact that none of these men are saints or demigods — they’re flawed and fallible mortals, with their secrets and sins and temptations just like anyone else. In turn, this begs the question of which sins and flaws would make a cardinal unfit for the papacy, especially since (for obvious reasons) the Catholic Church is highly averse to scandal nowadays.

But then the ending comes. Without getting too deeply into spoilers, this movie takes the ingenious step of bringing up a secret that isn’t really a sin. A secret that would only be cause for shame within the restrictive and archaic rules of the Catholic Church. In other words, the secret that could destroy the cardinal’s career would arguably be the exact same secret that makes this cardinal the perfect one for the job.

All of this is compounded by the highly secretive nature of the selection process. Ostensibly, the cardinals are supposed to be kept isolated so there won’t be any outside influences affecting their decisions. But maybe that’s a bad idea. Because the current setup means these cardinals are stewing in their own self-important paranoia from start to finish. Also, if they’re closing their eyes to outside events, they might potentially lose sight of some important need-to-know information that might render a cardinal unfit for office. (See my earlier point about scandals.)

Most importantly, if the cardinals are sequestered to the point where they can’t focus on anything but the chalice, they lose sight of why the chalice really matters. This is ultimately about who gets to lead a world full of Catholics, after all, and how Catholics are going to interact with people of other different faiths (and those of no faith). These cardinals can’t effectively lead the world by holding themselves apart from it.

All of that said, this movie is more than a simple power struggle. There are three prominent wild cards here to stir up the intrigue and keep the plot moving forward. One of them is Cardinal Benitez (newcomer Carlos Diehz), the Church’s newest cardinal. The details are unclear, but the late pope made Benitez a cardinal shortly before passing, and nobody knew about it until shortly before the conclave. The second major wild card is Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini), representing the local nuns. Agnes and her sisters are everywhere, keeping everything running, but they’re supposed to be invisible and separate from the whole process. Which of course means that Agnes is a badass who knows more and is capable of more than anybody wants to think about.

The third wild card is our protagonist. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is the dean in charge of overseeing the conclave. Which means if there’s any reason why a cardinal is unfit for the papacy, he’s responsible for making that reason known and ensuring that the best possible candidate gets the job. Yet he’s also technically a candidate for the papacy and thus has reason to eliminate any possible competition. I need hardly add that he’s responsible for maintaining the sequestration while also looking for any outside influence or secrets that might corrupt the outcome. Have I mentioned that this system is outdated and inherently flawed?

For what it’s worth, though Lawrence caucuses with the liberals, he does his level best to run the show in a fair and even-handed manner. Others may doubt his motives or his methods, but his heart is in the right place and he sincerely wants the best for the Catholic Church with absolutely zero desire to take the papacy for himself. Which paradoxically might make him the best one for the job.

There’s a lot going on in this movie. It’s genuinely impressive how the film makes so many relevant and incisive statements about democracy and politics, in a setting that makes the statements so much more pointed and yet so universal. It certainly helps that the plot is a damn fine potboiler, slowly but surely peeling back the layers to show the dark rotten underbelly of the characters and the greater system.

That said, the plot was undeniably more effective in those moments when it focused on the characters. There’s a domestic terror subplot that doesn’t hit nearly as hard as it should. The intrigue about the circumstances of the late pope’s death kind of fizzles out. I didn’t care for the scenes of Lawrence playing detective, especially since it’s his assistant (Monsignor O’Malley, played by Brian F. O’Byrne) who does most of the heavy lifting offscreen. But the payoff to that detective work, Lawrence’s confrontation scenes with that new information, are all fantastic.

Lawrence spends more or less the entire movie chasing down leads to uncover truths about the other cardinals in the race, but these all turn out to be disparate storylines. There’s no central mystery to drive the plot forward, which is kind of a huge missing piece for a suspense thriller. Throwing out a half-dozen disparate storylines without anything to tie them all together is disappointing and disorienting, and it drags down the pacing considerably.

Even with that caveat, Conclave is a strong political drama. It’s a film overflowing with intelligence and heart, with insightful and impactful statements about democracy, power, and why they matter. The established talents are all working wonders within their respective comfort zones, but the true unsung hero here is Carlos Diehz. The newcomer holds his own against so many seasoned veterans, gracefully performing to excellence as the strong beating heart of the movie.

I get how the religious trappings might be a turnoff for anyone who isn’t a Christian or a Catholic, but the backdrop really only serves to place the story within its own self-contained nation with its own culture and values and rules. (Which the Vatican technically is, to my understanding.) And anyway, I want to stress emphatically that the film is less about Catholicism and Christian values than it is about politics and who should be put in charge. And those exact priorities are a powerful thematic statement in itself.

If you haven’t seen this one yet, I totally recommend it.