Let it not be said that Conclave, the new film about the selection of a new pope from director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) and screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), is dishonest. I found it fascinating, unsentimental, and exceptionally keen in its understanding of human nature. Nevertheless, there is, at the picture’s heart, an ideological misjudgment that consigns its final moments to the realm of farce. The movie imagines that it has shaken the very foundation of the Catholic Church. In reality, its subversion is so modest that a single “Hail Mary” should cover it. Conclave’s poster declares that “what happens behind these walls will change everything.” The work of the movie is to reveal the emptiness of that promise. 

The film stars Ralph Fiennes as Thomas Lawrence, dean of the College of Cardinals in present-day Vatican City. As the story begins, the old pope has died, leaving Lawrence to arrange the voting that will elect his successor. That process, undertaken in cloistered seclusion, provides not only the movie’s action but also its warily aggressive tone. If, as one character remarks, the closest corollary to a papal conclave is an American political convention, it is surely the smoke-filled room, with its backbiting and deal-making, that rings a bell.