Conclave is the latest film by director Edward Berger, whose previous film, All Quiet On The Western Front, was awarded the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. The filmmaker’s latest is based on the 2016 book by Robert Harris about a cardinal who uncovers a scandal involving the late pope and a candidate.
The film adaptation has just been released by Focus Features and has been celebrated as one of the best films of the current awards season.
Conclave stars Ralph Fiennes in one of his most assured and subtle performances that has won him raves ever since the premiere at The Telluride Film Festival. The themes in the film concern one of the world’s oldest institutions, which is mired in ways that date back centuries. Berger’s adaptation is a powerful and timely film that you will want to talk about for long after you’ve seen it.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
I’m curious, was the church something that you were interested in before you got involved in this?
I was raised Protestant, but I wasn’t a big churchgoer. I still am not, but I go to Christmas events for the kids. The only thing I would say about the church is, what if we didn’t have it? What if we didn’t have temple and synagogue and mosque and church? That would be a big thing of our life, the history and tradition. All of that would be missing. We would be pretty much lost at sea. I think it is an important institution that gives us a cultural identity.
What inspired the tone and pacing of the film?
It was my opportunity to make a political conspiracy thriller like the ones from the ’70s, an Alan Pakula movie, like The Parallax View for example. I was thinking about and feeling that kind of conspiracy paranoia around you when the walls have ears. It could take place in Washington DC, and it could take place within any big corporation where the CEO’s top job is gone. It’s basically who gets that job and what people do to get it.
Let us discuss the novel by Robert Harris. What was it about the book that spoke to you where you thought, I can make a political thriller out of this?
I think the main reason why I made this movie was to explore Ralph Fiennes’ interior journey where I have a person who’s in that position who says, I have difficulty with prayer. That’s the core of his job. That is the essence of it. It’s like you saying, I have difficulty believing in the words I write or me, I have difficulty in the capability of the camera capturing any truth. It’s kind of like that.
You’re at an existential crisis in your life, and I think I identified with that in terms of looking for the meaning of what I do and the truth of what I do, and I constantly belabor it with doubts and think, should I do this? Should I do that? Should I even be a filmmaker? Should I make a different film? Where should I put the camera?
These are constant questions that are sort of racing around in your mind, especially in a profession that isn’t an exact science, where you can’t say, okay, it has to be this way, otherwise it’s not going to be right. Moviemaking is just sort of, you don’t know. It’s a 51 to 49% chance of the right decision.
There are some amazing crafts in this movie. What did you want to achieve with production design by Suzie Davies?
All the sets we built were of The Sistine Chapel. I knew we were going to shoot that, so that’s very ecclesiastical. The other one we built, which is the Casa Santa Marta, had to feel the opposite, a claustrophobic and cold oppressive place that when the shutters go up in the end you feel a relief of life coming back in. And so was that represented. I knew most of the places in Rome were basically marble or white or black or gray. It’s not very colorful.
The costumes by Lisy Christi are very striking, particularly with the use of the color red. Most of the backgrounds as you mentioned are not colorful per se…
I knew that the costumes had to play a pivotal role in the film. The use of red was not meant to be beautiful. The cardinal robes are actually very red though the fabric looks a little bit cheap. It looked much richer 50 years ago, and we kind of designed it to have that richness, that lusciousness of color, that the fabric is just beautiful that Lisy picked.
A really good score is kind of sparing. There’s no overpowering here. Talk a little bit about working with Volker Bertelmann again…
The opening of the movie starts in the church, and we decided let’s not make it holy music. Let’s really sort of break that and surprise the audience. I always think, how would I watch this? If there’s music that I expect, I kind of go like, yeah, okay, got it. This way I kind of lean in. He’s sort of inviting me in to lean in and the music does a lot of the tone shift.
We didn’t have the opening themes for a long time, and only in the very end, I said to Volker, “We need something that tells the audience this is a thrilling ride that you can also sit back and have fun. It’s not a dry bread that’s hard to swallow,” that’s what I wanted to kind of signal with the music.
I wanted to talk to people about this after I saw it. What do you hope that people get out of this movie? There’s a lot going on…
When people say, “I want to talk about the movie afterward,” that’s the best thing that can happen. If it’s a discussion, if people suddenly go, oh, that was a beautiful inner journey, I can take that. I can identify with Ralph’s journey and see something of myself in him and also discuss how cracks in rigid organizations or rigid societies, or this case, the church can maybe be an opportunity to shine a light through and bring something positive for the future.
Ralph carrying the turtle to the water at the end was certainly hope for the future…
The turtle, and especially the women, the three women that walk away. I saw a picture of three nuns and whites a photograph, and I thought this should be our last shot. Ralph is looking at the future accepting it and embracing it.
Conclave is now playing in theaters.
