That the resulting film has landed squarely in the middle of the awards mix is down to how canny Harris, Straughan and Berger have been about covering as many bases as they can between them. If you're devout, then of course the outcome of this particular election can only ever seem a matter of life and death from the off. For curious atheists, this set-up is just silly enough to be entertaining, like an episode of Drag Race for centrist dads; the costumes are more buttoned down, but the competition proves similarly fierce. In a big year globally for elections, Conclave doesn't have to do much to hook us with the promise of watching one play out in near-total transparency, almost from a God's-eye view, every vote and each round of voting drawing us further into its drama, and into the sort of backrooms where the Kamala Harris faction convinced Joe Biden to step down and Keir Starmer struck whatever deal he did with the Murdochs. Yet somewhere on its route to the screen (and onto Academy screeners), Conclave has also assumed that element of self-reflexivity that often gives awards contenders the edge over their rivals. In all this relentless jockeying for position, in this frenzied image management, can we not also see reflected the process by which Oscars and BAFTAs are won and lost? One candidate's droll aside - "I understand the trick is to offend no-one" - could easily serve double duty as the watchwords of any creative gearing up for the next four months of campaigning.
I'll confess I was a touch sceptical going into Conclave, and even some way into Conclave. Given the considerable paperwork involved, all the writing, casting and burning of votes, there are points early on where it begins to resemble an especially drawn-out HR process, a series of meetings that could have been an email, such is the verbosity of this script. (English, Italian and Latin: mamma mia!) But it becomes weirdly, unexpectedly engrossing, and it becomes engrossing because Berger plainly loves actors. He loves his actors in groups of two and three, murmuring in hushed voices in darkened corridors; he loves huddling them in courtyards, like the figures in Jancsó movies; he loves them facing off over the breakfast table; he loves cutting between their expressions as those votes are cast and counted. Actors are all Berger has here, deprived of the obvious effects of his earlier war film, and he makes the best possible use of them. He makes Fiennes' Lawrence both his organising principle and onscreen representative, a man striving to shoulder sudden responsibility, avoid the mistakes of others and ensure the best possible outcome for all parties, including the audience; in doing so, Berger draws another parallel between acting in both the theological and thespian senses. One recurring idea in this script is that the worthiest candidates for the top job are those who don't appear to want it; conversely, the worst would be those who noisily do. This surely accounts for Berger's fondness for no-nonsense pros, folks who come in, do exactly what's required of them, and then leave their cassock hanging on the back of the trailer door. Any vote cast for Conclave in the coming months will be one for brisk professionalism, for guile, stealth and skill; but it may also be a demonstration of solidarity, mindful of the fact certain branches of the film industry were on strike not so long ago. Crafty in its procession of human faces and foibles, Conclave is not a film that could have been arrived at by AI - and, at the very last, miraculously, it proves altogether less trad than it first looks.
Conclave is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
No comments:
Post a Comment