Conclave.

Conclave takes a mass-market paperback novel by Robert Harris and turns it into a prestige drama that already has jumped ahead in the awards conversation. The surprise is that it’s pulpy good fun, with a strong cast led by a masterful performance by Ralph Fiennes, until it goes a little off the rails with the first of its two big twists and reminds you of its shallowness.

The Pope is about to die as Conclave opens, and, oops! His Holiness is dead, may the jockeying for his job commence. The Church must convene a conclave of all of its cardinals, but everyone already seems to know who the contenders are, primarily the Italian reactionary Goffredo Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), who wants to roll back the clock a few hundred years; the Canadian schemer Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), whose ambition is so naked Jesus would clothe it; the Nigerian Joseph Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), whose views range from liberation theology to virulent homophobia; and the pragmatist American Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), whose interest in the papacy may stem as much from a desire to stop Tedesco from destroying the institution as his own ambition. Lording over the sequestered group is Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes), a friend of Aldo’s who recently tried to resign his position over a crisis of faith. Meanwhile, there’s a secret cardinal who arrives unannounced to the conclave, Vincent Benitz (Carlos Diehz), who has been working in multiple warzones and whose identity the previous pope protected for his safety. What happens from there is sort of Election with old men – there’s backstabbing, scandal, and vote-buying, with Cardinal Lawrence trying to gather information from beyond the sequestration, which is supposed to protect the Cardinals from all news of the outside world while they cast their votes.

For about three-fourths of Conclave, it’s a slick, dialogue-heavy, prime time drama that keeps moving from one controversy to the next, with Cardinal Lawrence’s nervous energy and some campy plot turns powering the film. It’s quite fun, with Fiennes at the top of his game, Tucci more or less playing Stanley Tucci in a Cardinal costume, and Castellitto leaning hard into his villain’s role. (The film’s philosophical heart could not be clearer.) Then the first twist happens, and it bursts the realistic bubble enough to take you completely out of the film’s environment and remind you that this is just a page-turner adapted for the screen. The twist would itself have been enough to upend the film, but the timing is just heavy-handed, not to mention ridiculous, and the whole sequence relies on something outside of the conclave to redirect the course of events – which undercuts the film’s greatest strength, the sequestered nature of the conclave itself.

The second twist, which ends the film and apparently is straight from the book, is probably going to be the more controversial one if Conclave gets some legs in award season, but despite its similarly “WTF?” nature, it is more effective than the first twist because it’s funny, and in a script that largely dispenses with humor, that’s a pretty powerful way to wrap things up. It does lead Cardinal Lawrence to have to make a quick decision with huge consequences, with one (divine?) hand on the scale already, but the twist’s bigger impact might just be the reminder that, hey, this has all been good pulpy fun, and don’t take it all so seriously. And it is fun – I enjoyed the movie for what it was. It never drags, Fiennes is great in every scene (and he’s in just about every scene), and I certainly didn’t see the second twist coming. If you take it at face value, it’s a good time at the theater, nothing more.

I’ve seen none of the other Oscar contenders so far except for Dune 2, so I’m only guessing whether Conclave will end up in consideration for any of the big awards, but my gut says it’s going to sneak in as one of the last Best Picture nominees because it feels like a Serious Drama and has a lot of accomplished actors in its cast. Fiennes, who has two Oscar nominations to his name, feels like a lock to get one for Best Actor, and this is a fantastic performance from him; his combination of understated speech and telling expressions is perfect for Cardinal Lawrence, a man bedeviled (pun intended) by doubt yet driven by responsibility and love for the institution. Lithgow, a two-time Oscar nominee with six Emmys and two Tonys, is a Very Serious Actor who is kind of hamming it up here as Tremblay, wearing this “who me?” expression throughout the film that makes it pretty clear that, yes, you, almost from his first appearance. Tucci. The film utterly wastes Isabella Rossellini, who plays a nun who runs the housekeeping and catering staff for the conclave and is there to provide information on one of the scandals and, I presume, to be Isabella Rossellini. Of all of the supporting players here, Castellito might deliver the best performance, even though his character is rather two-dimensional, as he gives Tedesco such a fiery personality that he makes the threat of his papacy more palpable, with, perhaps, an unanticipated parallel to an imminent election of another sort.