Conclave

By Joanna Langfield

The mix of papal pomp and pulp delivers something all too rare these days: a movie that feels like a perfect airplane read. It’s smart enough to compel, silly enough to keep us entertained.

A pretty terrific Ralph Fiennes stars as the cog in the unwieldy wheel that is the papal conclave. The Pope has died. And it is up to Fiennes’s Lawrence to convene and conduct the international group that will select a new leader of the Catholic Church.

Ah, the Catholic Church. Screenwriter Peter Strughan does not tread lightly when it comes to addressing not just the protocol, but the challenges today’s Church has been facing, too. Secrets abound. And it’s up to Cardinal Lawrence to decide just how to factor those into the crucial decision he is tasked to make happen. And if you think our politics is, well, political, wait till you see what happens behind the shut tight doors of the Vatican!

Director Edward Berger does a fine job of seesawing between the awe of the Church and its history and the very dicey modern day problems that have infiltrated it. Readers, I mean viewers, will get enough of a taste of the traditional for comfort, as well as a good dose of backbiting, bad behavior and even a pretty 21^st Century twist to keep it all maybe real? And there’s a fine group of actors, led by Stanley Tucci and John Lithgow, neither of whom get to stray very far from the screen personas they’ve developed over the years, and Isabella Rossellini, who, refreshingly, does.

I don’t know how the devout or even the dechurched will react to this somewhat ambitious look at faith amongst mere mortals. What it delivers is both sharp and slick. Which, I guess, means it has something, if not everything, for everybody.