Movie Review: Conclave
Not your average priest’s review
The film Conclave has earned rave reviews from critics and audiences from around the world and has picked up a host of awards across all the major ceremonies so far, including the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, and winning Best Picture at the BAFTAs. Adapted from the novel by Robert Harris, it also had eight nominations at the 2025 Academy Awards, eventually winning Best Adapted Screenplay.
Why would I be so silly?
I know what you are thinking: “Father! What is wrong with you? Conclave? And you’re very first movie review as well! Surely not…” And yes- I understand. Any way you look at it- this review seems to be the very definition of a fool’s errand. I am either going to write some scathing review as why this is the worst movie ever made and an affront to all things Catholic. In which case, you’ll be pleased I haven’t lost my mind. Or, I am one of those impossibly “nice” priests who couldn’t possibly bring himself to say anything negative, even in the face of rank blasphemy. In which case, you’ll start looking for that unsubscribe button at the bottom of your email. Either way, it seems a miracle that you have even gotten this far into the review. But this is not that kind of review. This is not your average pastor’s review.
I remember when I saw the Davinci Code back in the day, thinking for the first 30-40 minutes: “this movie might actually be good- this is very bad.” Then the 41st minute came around and it revealed itself for what it was: Monty Python’s Arian Heresy. Conclave shares a similar fate. The visual creatives who made this movie are insanely talented. The videography and scenography of contemporary films are extraordinary. The visual and artistic beauty of Conclave is not to be denied. The costumes too are remarkably well done, with a few minor exceptions. The world of Conclave is a world I know well, and their re-production of it is stunning. But these facts are not an absolution for its sins against the truth- they only add to the burden of its guilt.
Not everyone agrees…
What prompted me to bother with Conclave was not the awards it won or the review scores that flattered it. What turned my attention to the movie was Damian Thompson in his Holy Smoke podcast and the episode with Dr Kurt Martens (Professor of Canon Law at the Catholic University of America). Both men thought that the film was “very good,” “excellent,” and “visually stunning”- and both of whom confessed to having watched it multiple times. I was as amazed and alarmed by their comments as you are by this review appearing in this journal. My worry was not that they were right, but rather that the power of the culture to subvert may go unrecognised.
It is too easy for Catholics to dismiss films like Conclave. We can call it Oscar bait, cultural pandering and a shining example of Hollywood’s cultish obsession with secular-progressive issues. These critiques might perhaps end the matter, except for the fact that on Rotten Tomatoes, Conclave has a 93% approval rating amongst critics- to be expected; and an 83% approval rating amongst audiences- to be explained. The woke agenda is under serious political and bureaucratic scrutiny; yet its cultural works are still being approved by a super-majority of audiences. This needs both an explanation and a remedy.
So, what did audiences see, that we must get them to unsee?
What do I actually think
The great problem with Conclave is not just its overt criticism of an all-male priesthood- the only words of wisdom come from the unblemished character of Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini’s character) while the men blithely stumble about looking for a viable papal candidate or even their own faith. It is not just in playing into the laziness of utterly predicable religious tropes. (Most characters are a cartoonishly clerical rendering of Boris and Natasha). It is not the reductio ad politica of all things papal. (The only issues in the Church are western liberal-progressive ones). It is not even the deus ex machina solution of a transgender pope being the answer to the prayers that no has prayed. (Although I am not sure what is the greater fantasy: a female Pope or an Italian traditionalist cardinal?) The problem with conclave is not just what so many critics have already revealed- that it tries to undermine the religion it is trying to re-create. The other great failure of Conclave is that it commits the grave artistic sin of taking itself more seriously than the content it has come to capture. And when a film takes itself that seriously, it generally has zero intention of treating its audience with respect. All its attention is centred upon itself. The arts are a mirror held up to the world. And sometimes what the artist reveals, the world does not want to see. However, the one thing the world should not be subjected to, is an artist who holds up a mirror up to himself to reflect his own prejudices and pre-conceived ideas. Conclave is not merely bad religion, it is poor art.
This may seem like a trifling idea when compared with the moral, doctrinal and spiritual errors of its story. However, when you are facing a culture that is both religiously and artistically impoverished as ours, ridicule rather than religion is the best way to push back against it. Before asking an irreligious world to consider the finer (and in some cases most basic) points of Catholic theology and self-understanding; we need to find a way to speak into that culture, in order to rebuild it. But before we can rebuild it, we have to point out that its self-certainty is built on very shaky ground. So let me do that for you…
Time for ridicule
In a world where nothing is black and white; and no one is a what (s)he seems- comes a film that only a Hollywood critic could love: Two and a Half Women. Watch as 120 men get completely owned by two nuns and a tranny in a story that seems more like the plot from the pilot of a failed American sitcom. Be in awe at the story of a (wo)man who was created a cardinal in secret in order to protect his/her/their life from the danger of public attention, who then decided to show up uninvited to the most intensely media scrutinised event on the planet: a papal conclave. (The real way to protect zim/zers identity from public media attention would have been to make them a traditionalist.) Watch two hours of clerical c-Span, where the voting, ballot counting and factional infighting makes elections in the US look like an episode from Friends. Marvel at the political spectacle of a white man who wants to be Pope. But undoes his chances because he discovers a secret that no one knows; and instead of releasing it to the press anonymously like any normal bad guy, lays a trap like a Bond villain and blows himself up in the process. Marvel at the spectacle of a black man who want to be pope. But couldn’t keep his hands off the help. There’s absolutely nothing racist about the stereotype of a sexually incontinent person of colour fathering a child out of wedlock. Marvel at the spectacle of an Englishman who doesn’t want to be pope, because he’s not sure he actually believes in the pope, or the church whose leader is the pope. But then goes on to preach a sermon about the need to elect a pope who doesn’t believe in anything at all- not even biological gender. Watch this brilliantly acted, brilliantly costumed and brilliantly filmed story of a girl’s rise to power from the slums of South America all because she doesn’t have the testicular fortitude for the job.
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Ah, and now, thank you for many reasons to not watch this. One doesn’t need any gift of discernment to know that if Hollywood likes it, then to run the other way! Yuck.