REVIEW: Conclave
The top-notch drama delivers as expected.
In life there are four defined seasons. But, in the life of movies there’s really only three.
The first (and most important) is summer — the blockbuster season established in 1975 by Steven Spielberg and Jaws and now reserved almost exclusively by IP (intellectual property) films built on other mediums that have a built-in audience and thus more likely to exceed their multi-hundred-million-dollar budgets.
The worst season for Hollywood is the first few winter months of the year. That’s when they hope people are so mad with cabin fever that they’ll head out to the cineplex to see the blockbuster hopefuls that ended up being shit. And any other general failures that might have a chance to make a few bucks before being exiled to streaming.
The prestige season is fall, when studios release the films they think have the best chance of award nominations and want them to be top-of-mind for awards voters.
Conclave is the epitome of a traditional Hollywood late fall prestige film.
Directed by Edward Berger — following his last same prestige work All Quiet on the Western Front — it merits the seasonal awards placement. It has all the requisite elements: Stellar cast, impeccable production, and a great script.
Just on the cast alone, it’s hard to think how Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow and a bunch of serious-looking European actors could ever make the same mistake of being in the same crap movie. Unless maybe Francis Ford Coppola was back at it…
Based on a novel which I assume is well researched, it takes us behind the scenes of what happens in the Catholic Church when a new pope is chosen. That’s always been a mysterious process to begin with. But, of course there’s much more political intrigue to this story.
I’m not even going to go beyond that on the plot. It’s better to unfold on its own. And, unsurprisingly the cast is uniformly excellent. I mean, what else is there talk about?
If you know movie seasons, and studios, and premiere casts you knew this was going to be good from the first trailer.
And, it is.