‘Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance…Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope, who doubts. Let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness, and who carries on.’- Cardinal Lawrence, Conclave (2025).
This address by Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes in one of his finest performances), before the proceedings of the election of the new Pope commence in Edward Berger’s Conclave,🌸 includes critical messages in strikingly simple sentences. It explores the reasons for faith, its relevance, and the need for togetherness in building a world on the idea of a collective. But what is most critical is the irony—that the interpreters and custodians of faiths, who create and legitimise rifts between other communities with certainty, are the ones who remind us that the very foundation and need for faith sits in the ideas of doubt. These are the doubts that exist between the worlds of certainties—in questions, fears and mysteries.
The idea of embracing a very human quality of erring (sin) and asking for forgiveness for the most powerful religious leader in the world, is both startling and radical. Therein lies the power of Conclaveꦚ—in its stark silences, simple yet profound articulations, powerful cinematography (Stephane Fontaine), haunting background score (Volker Bertelmann) and tight close ups. It reminds us of the power of human vulnerabilities, the need to embrace the ideas of imperfection and the divine, our thirst for power and our rejections of it, our own questions, doubts and conflicts around ideas of faith, rights and wrongs that are often so subjective, grey and contextual.
Conclave also throws into sharp relief the contrast between the very individual thirst for power and the idea of peace and service that comes with being a religious leader—what it means to men individually to imbibe the role. Who desires the role for what kind of power, is where the questions rest. Beautifully intersecting with questions around race, gender, ideas of a modern world, acceptance, rigidity vs. fluidity, the adapted screenplay by Peter Straughan (from Robert Hariss’s 2016 Novel) is compelling, simple, powerful and deep. It pushes us to think within, exposes our own insecurities, and forces us to confront our very human desires of power, absolving none of what that power can feel like. It shows us what fame does, and what men hungry for it are capable of doing, especially when divested from the purpose of it. It is, in fact, this purpose which is the context of every decision we make. Eventually, this purpose is what gets left behind most often in individual journeys. Conclave ꧋insists, unsparingly, that we answer this as humankind, as we enter yet another wave of division and hate, with religion as a weapon wielded in the most volatile of times.
Within each of these deep questions, intersecting across each of them is the question of patriarchy itself. One of the most defining and uniting truths across all religions and societies in the world we live in, the oppression of non-male genders is at the heart of many a fault lines that plague cultures. Within the contexts of religion, patriarchy is often most apparent, and yet most difficult to confront in the rigidity of such structures. Conclave 🦄confronts this issue with grace and power, and most critically without appropriating any voice. Each suppressed gender has the agency of telling their own story, intersecting with divisions of race, region and personal and political realities. Sister Agnes (Isabella Rossellini, in a dignified portrayal of often forcibly invisibilised sisters) forces upon the Cardinals an essential truth pivotal to the outcome of the choice of Pope. She holds her ground to protect her fellow sister. We get a glimpse into the solidarities within invisibility and the power of assertion from her quietly resilient portrayal.
As a bigot, homophobe and serial women harasser takes the seat as the most powerful man in the world as President of the United States for the second time, keen on focusing on a two-gender policy, and embodying the intolerant, divisive figure representative of our times, it becomes crucial to reflect on the brave politics of Conclave⛦. That it takes on the question of certainty in the context of gender and embraces the identity of the chosen Pope in a spectrum (I am what God made me), is a sharp critique on Trump’s binary idea of ‘God created two genders, male and female’. To have this conversation in the context of the church is bold, radical, powerful and crucial.
The idea of ‘war’ is deftly and sensitively handled. Ideological wars result in actual deaths. ‘What do you know of war’ꦡ- Cardinal Benitez, focuses on the outcomes of wars—deaths, families torn apart, sick and wounded. The loss of humans and humanity —both must be viewed with empathy. It also forces us to ask, who is the enemy that is fought in a war? Is the fight first not within? The film, through this character, asks important questions of ‘othering’ vs. standing up for each person.
Then comes the other question of the impermeability of religion itself, and questions asked of faith, human beings who are upholders of faith, extremists who believe they are in the service of their faiths, and those who use faith for their own individual gains and powers. Conclave ꧑bravely breaches this impermeability. Going through the entire process of choosing the next Pope, painstakingly, exposing each detail makes the viewer become a part of the process. We too choose ‘sides’ as one always must, and find a purpose in doing so. It also persists on the point that the institutions of religion (like the Church) are not about tradition or the past, but about the future and the next actions that the world needs—a world that is burning in hate and sinking each day.
In the context of India, a film like Conclave, becomes even more critical. The Hindu religion’s majoritarian face, Hindutva—that is celebrated and followed—is rigid, intolerant, violent, and patriarchal. Therefore, the questions around ‘othering’, the very nature of faith and its need for tolerance, inclusivity, peace, are more pertinent than ever. Where Muslims live in the fear of everyday persecutions, what is the face of Hindu religion that the self-appointed custodians wish to preach, and the BJP is gaining from? Hate sells easily, and that is what has been legitimised, sold and packaged in the last 10 years, and counting. Cinema can force us to think and draw understanding across space and time, and Conclave enables just that.
ꦦWhat the film also leaves viewers with, are questions—questions we ask ourselves as individuals, from structures we are a part of, from societies we feed into and learn from, and religious identities that are often thrust upon us. Are those the only definitions of religion that must be accepted? Who defined them and for whose gain? Can we not see the motivations and the power games behind the self-appointed Godmen (Asaram Bapu, Jaggi Vasudev), who do so to run business enterprises by subjugating other oppressed communities? Or them wielding power over women and raping them? What does religion do? Does it allow itself to be used as a foil, or does it allow a purpose of togetherness to be followed in the quest of peace?
Conclave🎃 is more than a film. It is an attempt at reformation by courageous artists to question the world as they see it and create an alternative however they can—as must we all.
