Conclave vs. Conclave (Or: When the movie is better)
I read Conclave by Robert Harris so you don’t have to. Here are what two changes from book to screen say about the movie, and why you can just stick with the film.
Comparing an adaptation to its source material is tedious. But forgive me, reader, that is what I’m here to do. It’s not of particular interest to me to just chart what has changed but to consider why and what the changes mean—especially when the adaptation is better.
The plot of Conclave the book and the movie is effectively the same. The movie is a beat-for-beat adaptation of the novel, with some small details changed. The pope dies and we open with his closest administrators dealing with this fact. A global conclave of cardinals must be called to elect a new pope.
The movie was directed (beautifully) by Edward Berger and the screenplay was adapted (well) by Peter Straughan, but the story comes from the novel by Robert Harris. According to my research (reading Wikipedia) Robert Harris otherwise has written historical fiction cum political thrillers about the two subjects closest to the heart of the Modern White Dad: WWII and ancient Rome. He was also once friends with both Tony Blair and Roman Polanski. Just some fun background animating details.
Conclave is a better movie than it is a book. Tonally, I would compare the movie to Tár: stylish and deeply considered packaging wrapped around a campy center. This is the same as the book: a historical procedural with a melodrama at its core.
The dragging first act of the book is lifted by the visual beauty of the movie and a comedy of contrasts: vaping, smartphone-using cardinals argue under grand arches. While the trailer is close-up shots of dramatic Acting, the movie is filled with lingering, long shots that revel in the grandeur of the architecture and the smallness of the men within it. In addition to the visuals, the movie version gives us the drama of a sweeping and sometimes eerie soundtrack, punctuated by jarring staccato strings, as well as the sometimes suffocating soundscape to back it up (we spend up to 70% of this movie listening to Ralph Fiennes’ laboured breathing).
In short, it is just more enjoyable to see all the outfits than it is to read them described in extensive detail.
The movie is a reminder that we have too few opportunities to get dressed up and submit ourselves to ritual. My beautiful husband is in the process of obtaining his Canadian citizenship. The entire process has been online, a series of badly formatted digital forms and email exchanges. It has been a fairly anticlimactic experience without a single iota of pomp or circumstance.
The power of—forgive me father—putting on a cunty little outfit should not be under-appreciated. Conclave appreciates the [redacted] out of those outfits. The aesthetics of Catholicism is the most enjoyable part of the movie. Red dresses are carefully put on, layer by layer, then thrown in contrast to big white marble backdrops: sumptuous to behold!1
The institutional power behind those aesthetics is off-screen. The fact of the church’s reach and scandal, that it holds sway over millions of lives, is not really at stake. It’s a movie about a series of men arguing over their ambitions in hallways. Their ambition to do what? No matter!
In the sequestered confines of a Vatican conclave, we can be washed away in the pomp, the circumstance, and the outfits, without needing to meaningfully consider what the pope is, does, or controls.
This is an intentional choice on the part of the movie. The novel Conclave gives more space to this fact. One of the most obvious changes from the source material is that several characters have changed nationalities. Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes are American and British—in the novel both are Italian. And while Tucci’s character has retained the same name, the main character played by Ralph Fiennes has gone from Jacopo Lomeli to Thomas Lawrence.
The Italianness of the main character is especially relevant to showcase the over-representation of Italy in the conclave and the power struggle between the conservatives and progressives. In an early scene in the novel, the traditional Tedesco says that people may soon start calling for the Vatican to leave Rome, after all:
“Now we have three cardinal electors from [the Philippines], which has — what? Eighty-four million Catholics. In Italy, we have fifty-seven million [...] and yet we have twenty-six cardinal electors!”
This fact is left out and the exchange is shortened. In the film, Tedesco and Lawrence have no common ground. Tedesco’s argument in the movie is a facet of his character, which is to be one of the Bad Guys, and not a facet of the church. Changing Lomeli to Lawrence underscores that the movie is not as interested in the broad power of, and power struggles within, the Catholic church. It further insulates the movie into its aesthetics. It is also possible it’s a practical move: Lomeli and Bellini sound somewhat similar. This is an American/British production and cast accordingly, I guess they thought that one Italian actor was enough.2
The book is not particularly concerned with unpacking what the Church means to its parishioners or the larger world either, but it pays more lip service to these questions. Lomeli struggles with his faith, the differing policies of the hopeful cardinals are discussed, and scripture is quoted. Lawrence has quiet moments of prayer and doubt, but by and large religion in the movie Conclave is less a site of meaning and more of a cudgel, a narrative force—who dares put God aside to speak their ambition first?
The movie makes the sides very easy to understand: the bad guys (homophobes, xenophobes); the middle ground (corrupted by their ambition); and then the good guys, with a vague moral stance of being welcoming and expanding the role of women in the Curia (whatever that means).3 Mostly the good guys believe in ‘the opposite of what the bad guys do.’ Don’t think too hard about how this reflects real life—the movie is here to distract you from other elections!
The other notable departure in the movie is the inimitable Isabella Rossellini. She is the only woman with a significant speaking role, the Sister orchestrating the army of nuns running the unspoken, less glamorous logistics of the conclave. The novel is told from Lomeli’s first-person point of view, and he does not take much notice of the nuns and their work. Part of the way through the story this chaste man moves his eyes slightly to the side of the room and comments on all the nuns: “To his shame, he realised he had never bothered to take any notice of them until now.” When he then goes to speak with Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini) he acknowledges he has not been in a kitchen in many years.
The movie on the other hand is unshackled from one man’s perspective. We see a lot more of the nuns. We watch many shots of silent work between the movie scenes and behind the scenes of the conclave. We see them silently working, cooking, laying tables, and passing out little toiletry bags. The movie as a whole ends with Lawrence watching two nuns resuming normal life outside. Sister Agnes plays a larger role even in her silence, as she observes and stalks around the cardinal’s temporary residence.
In book and movie alike, the entire conclave eventually pivots on that most nefarious of villains: a malfunctioning photocopier. Sister Agnes rescues Lawrence/Lomeli from his printer woes and shocking revelations4 are shared in hard copy with all 118 voting cardinals. By inserting the nuns and their silent work throughout the movie, the underlying meaning of this single scene is spread throughout the whole story: all these men fighting over who gets to wear the robes that women will launder.
What to make of Conclave vs. Conclave? The movie succeeds for the simple reason that it is more enjoyable to experience. This has been a lot of words to get down to one fact: the movie is fun and the book, in my estimation, is not. It’s a truism amongst my fellow nerds that the book is better—how many independent bookstores are currently stocking a sticker that says “Never judge a book by its movie”? Novels can contain doubt, complex views, and nuance that only the hammiest of movie voiceovers can convey. That said, Conclave, the novel by Robert Harris, contains more detail—oh the many names and procedures we learn—but subtlety it does not.
The movie actively reduces the source material’s already scanty religious leanings because it understands the assignment. That the film is beautiful and subtle in any way is a credit to the filmmaking and not its source material. It is an aesthetic object, a vehicle for beauty, melodrama, and potentially some Oscars.
The movie has the same message as the book: wanting the job is a disqualifier. The man who wants it the least is the most qualified. The specifics of the job are less relevant than the machinations it takes to get there. And when the machinations look this good, you may as well watch them instead.
Perhaps worth disclaiming at this point that I have been to approximately two Christian services before. They were unmemorable, maybe Protestant? I remember no good outfits.
The Italian actor, playing the conservative Tedesco, is the scene stealer. There’s a moment when he punctuates the public downfall of a rival by hitting his vape. Now that is cinema!!!
I looked it up because the movie does not define this: expanding the role of women in the administration of the church, also a real policy of Pope Francis, after whom the dead pope is loosely based. This fact is more apparent in the novel, which emphasizes the deceased pope’s asceticism and progressive positions, all of which is waved at loosely in the movie.
As for what those photocopied revelations are …. see Conclave in a theatre near you.