Alongside Berger’s masterful direction, credit must also go to composer Volker Bertelmann, who scooped an Oscar for the sweeping music of All Quiet on the Western Front, his last collaboration with the auteur, and brings a delicious playfulness to the score here – a hair-raising shiver of violins and cellos, punctuated with ominous, unsettling pianos, sudden, thrashing drums and groaning horns, turning what could have been a more sombre, buttoned-up chamber piece into a winking romp. The film simply wouldn’t work without it.
The same is true of Fiennes’s performance – Tucci and Lithgow are compelling, and Rossellini is striking, if criminally underused, but it’s the twice Oscar-nominated veteran who really dazzles, bristling with a deep-seated longing to leave this life of responsibility and ritual behind him, but acutely afraid of the incendiary forces that could rise up to fill that power vacuum if he does. He seems to be a lock for the Best Actor shortlist and given his commanding work here, not to mention an unparalleled, more-than-three-decade-long career, it’d be difficult to begrudge him if he won.
There are some issues with the script – a few far-too-on-the-nose nods to the US election still seem to be anticipating a showdown between Trump and Biden (“Is that where we are, choosing the least worst option?”) and now ring hollow – but such quibbles are easily dismissed when confronted with the sheer beauty of Conclave. Every single ravishing shot, composed by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine – a sea of figures with stark white umbrellas gushing towards the Vatican, greying stone courtyards dotted with red-robed clergy – has the air of a Renaissance painting, and the camera hangs hungrily over every ceremonial act, from the veiling of the former Pope’s body and the locking of his chambers with red ribbons, to the placement of every glass at the cardinals’ dinner and the breaking of each holy seal.
It’s a treat in every sense – visually, sonically, dramaturgically – and, as we hurtle into this bleakest of winters, exactly the kind of galvanising, pulse-racing shot in the arm we all need.
Conclave is in cinemas from 29 November.
