Conclave: Divine Thrills

We all like to, as they say, be seen, no? None of us enjoys what that old Slovenian Diogenes, Slavoj Žižek, follows his master Lacan in calling “symbolic castration.” Misrecognition according to our own notion of ourselves is bad enough. Imagine the horror if other people were indeed thinking about you all the time. But it’s just plain rude when there are indisputable external features at play and others just can’t get them right. Why else does the bully accuse his nerdish victim of being stupid? If nothing else, the accusation cuts deeper (and probably yields the much and rightly maligned “gifted kids”). If my hair is brown, don’t insistently call it red.

I confess that I cringe whenever a Catholic liturgy or other ceremony crops up in a movie. Everything is always so deeply and inexplicably wrong, the kind of tiny stuff that could be fixed by hiring some pontificator from the internet at $8 an hour, that it cannot but drive me insane. They’ll vest Catholic priests half like Reverend Lovejoy and half like Archbishop Lefebvre. They’ll put Catholic elements inside obvious Baptist (or similar) churches. It pains my heart. Partly vainly, yes. But also because this is thousands of years of history folks! This is that amorphous blob, you know, the old stuff from before about 2005. Get it right!

Edward Berger’s Conclave (2024) has the audacity to dress everyone in the right clothes. It’s a revelation. Set during a papal election when cardinals lock themselves away, the film showcases a dazzling variety of fashions (different outfits cardinals, archbishops, and nuns wear in different circumstances) and even includes Eastern Catholic clergy. There’s another point in Conclave’s favor. Regular ole Western Catholics forget us Byzantines all the time. Here’s a movie that remembers we exist—and even that some such clergy are cardinals.

Perhaps my tongue has been, I don’t know, about three quarters tucked into my cheek thus far. Fair enough. But there is more meat to go on these bones. The film has the wherewithal to recognize Catholic politicking for what it is: cynical, cutthroat, earnest, and well-meaning. Yes, the abuse crisis comes up. Yes, we meet cardinals out of the tradition of Richelieu. Indeed, we get dozens of weak-willed company men, bent on comfortable careers. We also, however, meet liberal do-gooders, confused, racist traditionalists, and a variety of other true believers (not that cynical politicking and real faith are by any means mutually exclusive).

I have volunteered at Church soup kitchens, flea markets, and other functions over the years. I’ve known bow-tied trads and trans Catholics Communists. It’s a billions-wide big tent. I’m not sure any film I’ve ever seen has so successfully captured both the latitude and the limitedness (these are the highest-ranking clergy after all) of the Church.

The story is fine; its narrative kept me interested. I didn’t fall asleep, even if I found its two-hour runtime a bit on the long side for such straightforward fare. The cinematography and tension building played about as well as the narrative would have you expect. I had the mystery (who will be the new pope?) ruined for before I saw the movie. But so what?

For once, I got to participate in the politics of representation on the big screen—not in any deep or politically profound way (I doubt that would have been very fun). Nothing is changed; the world keeps turning. I don’t even expect anyone to care. But hey I am happy to say they got the cattiness and sartorial sumptuousness right. For a night at the movies, I could’ve done much worse.