My Thoughts on "Conclave (2024)" (No Spoilers)
2Visual Description: A woman wearing a blue, prairie revival-style dress with a subtle floral print talks to the camera. She has long brown hair worn straight, and wears purple, cat's eye-shaped glasses that help her to see. There are wooden closet doors in the background.
Description: I wanted to share my thoughts on the movie "Conclave". I was inspired to watch it by the video "We Built This Conclave" by @ivodejager4437, which can be found here: • We Built This Conclave It was so 2000s I loved it and wanted to watch the real thing that it was based off of.
I greatly enjoyed Conclave. I loved Ralph Fiennes's acting. He's exceptionally skilled at subtle characters; he's capable of immense seriousness and heartbreaking emotional moments from normally stoic characters. His acting carries - which is good, because he played the protagonist sort of character. We watch the mysteries of the movie unfold and learn along with Mr. Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence.
I thought that the writing and acting were phenomenal. I also adored the set and the costume design. I loved the contrast of traditional elements from time immemorial, such as Roman architecture and Nuns' habits, contrasted by tennis shoes and iPads and modern vehicles and eyeglasses. There was a sense of timelessness and humanity carrying on, which I think worked perfectly with a movie about electing a new Pope.
Another thing I loved was the diversity of the cast. It was nice seeing actors and characters from all sorts of different backgrounds.
One thing to be aware of about the movie is that there are some moments that may be more touching/meaningful if you have some sort of connection to the religion as a whole. My Dad's side of the family are Catholic, and so when things like Latin mass and 10+ kids were brought up, I had a sense of personal connection to them. My extended family lived through those times and had firsthand experience with what the Catholic church was like back in the mid-20th century.