How do you follow one of the biggest international films in recent history? Director Edward Berger, who’s 2022 anti-war epic “All Quiet on the Western Front” won four Academy Awards and a record-breaking seven BAFTAs, didn’t have to ask himself such a question. Because by the time his celebrated film won all those honours, he was already deep in production of his next one.
‘Conclave’, the film that Berger had to briefly interrupt in order to pick up the Oscar for Best International Feature Film in March 2023, is the director’s first English-language feature film. But the Swiss national had long been working internationally, directing episodes of TV series like “The Terror” , “Your Honor” and “Patrick Melrose” starring Benedict Cumberbatch, for which Berger was nominated for an Emmy. For the next step in his career, he’s adapting Robert Harris’ 2016 novel “Conclave”, a political thriller, set in the fascinating, insular world of the Vatican.
“This is a world we know very little about, because obviously the door is closed, and it’s the most secretive election in the world,” says Berger when asked during the film’s press conference what interested him in the story of a (fictional) election of the successor to the deceased pope. “I was raised protestant, so it was really my curiosity that drew me to the project. All I knew about this procedure was: black smoke, white smoke, and suddenly someone steps out on a balcony. So, to have a look behind those closed doors was very interesting to me.”
While Berger used Harris’ novel for research, alongside various religious advisors and a theologist who was on set every day, some in his team had a bit more experience with the Catholic church than the director. “I was brought up Catholic when I was young, went to Catholic primary school in the UK, and a Catholic boys’ school in Ireland. So, I had a sense of the sort of masculine hierarchical structure of much of the Catholic church,” says Ralph Fiennes. As Cardinal Lawrence, he is not only responsible for organizing the conclave but also discovers that the former pope might have had secrets that concern some of the candidates for his succession.
While the film’s ensemble mostly consists of actors like Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, or Lucian Msamati playing cardinals who are voting for a new pope (and quite of few of them vying for the job at the same time), there’s also a woman to be found in the mix. Isabella Rossellini plays the small and rather silent, but nonetheless crucial part of Sister Agnes, who with her fellow nuns is responsible for the meals and general logistics during the conclave.
“I’m Roman and Catholic and went to Catholic school, so I had always witnessed that there was a very specific hierarchy between the priests and the nuns,” the actress explains. “But these women were not submissive, just like in our film. Silent, yes, but not submissive. That was very clear to me.” Berger had pitched the character to her as the keeper of all these guys who have come together – and someone who observes everything. “I understood that I had to be a shadow. And shadows are always present.”
There’s another side to the church that we see in the film, as Berger points out. “Among the most interesting scenes for me were Ralph not being able to handle the photocopier and Isabella helping him out, for example. Or the pope ending up in a plastic body bag, just like all of us,” the director says with regards to balancing the sacred and the mundane moments of a conclave. “We see the cardinals use their phones, we see them smoke and vape. We wanted to bring these holy men down to earth. To make them feel like all of us, with all their weaknesses. They’re going to sin. They’re going to cry. They’re going to make mistakes, and they’re human, you know? We’re all human.”
While the actors bonded over staying in the same hotel, taking the same minibuses to set (just like the cardinals do in the film), and – thanks to culinary expert Tucci – having dinners at many of Rome’s best restaurants, it was their director who made the filming of “Conclave” a special experience. “There is incredible assurance and a complete clarity of vision, when you look at the film,” says Tucci, who’s playing Cardinal Bellini, the most liberal of all the candidates. “Everything is very considered, but within those frames, there was a lot of latitude given to us actors by Edward, which was wonderful.”
Fiennes concurs: “Already at the first readthrough of the script, there was a wonderful sense of the collective. Edward is a wonderful enabler of that spirit. He let us play, let us find things. And that’s great between a group of actors, when you feel that you have that permission to play.”
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