No one gets any drinks thrown at them in Conclave. No one gets slapped. I don’t think anyone so much as gets called a mean name. Perhaps all of this should go without saying for a movie about picking a new pope. But people have been talking about Conclave—the awards-baiting Vatican-intrigue drama that’s now streaming on Peacock—like it’s some kind of high-art reality show. I need that to stop. Conclave does not deserve its drama queen reputation.
I suppose it’s all about expectations. If you went into Conclave not knowing anything about it, I can see how you might come out charmed by its depiction of the inherent drama of a bunch of guys wearing robes voting for the next leader of an extremely powerful religious institution. My mistake is that I was exposed to memes about Conclave before I saw the movie itself. And when these memes compared the film to Mean Girls and the Real Housewives franchise, I believed them. I went into Conclave anticipating a movie filled to the gills with pettiness and backstabbing and maybe even an expelled chalice of wine. I left thinking this thing was not nearly bitchy enough.
This scandal may be bigger than the twist ending. The New York Times, Vultureand other publications have gone out of their way to write about how Conclave revels (and finds great meme fodder) in its messy, nosy cardinals. But does it? Is it “messy” that the more liberal cardinals want to keep the more conservative cardinals from gaining power? Or is it the most boring possible definition of politics? I kept waiting for more, or any, betrayal, for more sneaky underhanded maneuvering. The movie’s machinations are not terribly emotionally charged or personal, and perhaps they don’t need to be, but these are the things that make reality television tick. The movie is chock-full of missed opportunities for diva antics. When John Lithgow’s character, Cardinal Tremblay, at one point implies that a character who said something damaging about him is not to be trusted because he’s been drinking more, I sighed. A Real Housewife would have known how to put some sauce on that accusation.
Fans of the movie seem bizarrely determined to praise an alternate, better version of it that only really exists in their heads. I felt like a crazy person reading the Times describe how at another point Tremblay is “shamed when [Isabella] Rossellini’s Sister Agnes reads him for filth.” I went back to the scene in question, and the most substantial thing Sister Agnes says in it is, “She was indeed here at the specific request of Cardinal Tremblay.” The subtly of this reveal, the way that it’s not a bombastic accusation but a simple fact, is what’s noteworthy about it, but sure, let’s call that “reading for filth.”
I can accept that some of the glee over Conclave is hyperbolic—as the Times admits, “it’s amusing to get really excited about a movie about priests”—but then the paper hits us with “These men of the cloth are just as chaotic and messy as the backstabbers of reality television and prime-time soap operas.” Again, show me the cardinal who could go toe to toe with Kristen Doute and then we can talk. I can see how you might be tempted to say it was “so Conclave” when, in the Vanderpump Rules universe, Doubt once orchestrated bringing a woman from a man’s past into a closed environment to humiliate himbut she did it purely out of spite, and that’s the missing ingredient here: These cardinals are motivated by principles, which is so much less fun.
The Conclave everyone is talking about sounds like a great movie. I would love to watch a gloriously bitchy drama about choosing a new pope; sign me up. Unfortunately, it seems like people have become so enamored with the idea of a fun, intrigue-filled movie about cardinals that they have failed to consider that this isn’t actually the movie Edward Berger made. It’s almost insulting that Conclave will be streaming on Peacock, of all networks, alongside so many of the Bravo shows no one can stop likening it to. These cardinals wouldn’t last five minutes at a Real Housewives reunion.