Edward Berger didn’t grow up Catholic. “I was raised outside the church, but if we went, it would be the Protestant Church,” he says over the phone. But when he was 9, he attended a Catholic Mass with a friend, an experience that stayed with him.
“I remember really feeling caught out. I had no clue about all the rituals — when you knelt and how to do the sign of the cross, that doesn’t exist in the Protestant Church. I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m in the secret club, and they’re going to catch me and kick me out! I’m not even allowed to be here because I’m a heretic! I’m Protestant!’ All those rituals and visuals, I remember being very fascinated with it. That world has stuck in my head — I’m sure the awe of that found its way into this movie.”
Ralph Fiennes, left, and Edward Berger chat behind the scenes at Zurich Film Festival 2024.
(Sandro Baebler / Trunk Archive)
On a conference call with his leading man, Ralph Fiennes, in between awards-season events such as the AFI Awards luncheon and a feting at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, the director is tracing the origins of “Conclave,” the follow-up to his 2022 “All Quiet on the Western Front” adaptation, which won four Oscars. Although “Conclave” is based on Robert Harris’ 2016 novel, the juicy thriller, which received eight nominations, including best picture and lead actor, also may have been inadvertently derived from the childhood memories of Berger and his star, even if those influences are far more amorphous.
Fiennes was raised Catholic, born into a family where his great-uncle and uncle were both theologians. His mother was a devout Catholic as well, but at 13, Fiennes decided he’d had enough. “I told my mother that I no longer wanted to go to Mass,” he recalls. “This was in Ireland in 1975. At that time, all my brothers and sisters, we were at Catholic school — not unhappy, but there was a dominance of religion in everyday life and particularly in schools. It was quite oppressive. There was this certainty — ‘This is the only faith, these are the rules’ — and I didn’t like that.” With a chuckle, he adds, “I was rebellious.”
That disdain for such rigidity — that desire to explore nuance, complexity, doubt — can drive many away from religion. And it can lead some of them into the arts. Now, decades after those formative years, Berger and Fiennes have collaborated on a film set in the Vatican. At the start of “Conclave,” the pope has just died, and the dean of the college of cardinals, Thomas Lawrence (Fiennes), must run the conclave that will elect the pope’s successor. Suffused with political intrigue and teasing mysteries, “Conclave” has been an art-house smash, combining a distinguished cast (Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Oscar nominee Isabella Rossellini) with the kind of pulpy twists and bitchy backbiting not unfamiliar to those who adore trashy reality television.
But for Berger and Fiennes, the film’s appeal was crystallized by a speech the dean delivers to his fellow cardinals before the initial vote, telling them that he considers certainty the greatest of all sins. The thoughtful, socially progressive Lawrence is a man wrestling with all manner of doubt — his faith is wavering, he has trouble praying, and he doesn’t want the responsibility of being the next pope himself, although some in the Vatican are championing his candidacy. Fiennes connects Lawrence’s questioning spirit to his family, despite the fact that they were more religious than he was.
Director Edward Berger, left, works with Ralph Fiennes on the set of “Conclave.”
(Philippe Antonello / Focus Features)
“My great-uncle — my mother’s uncle — was quite a presence at family events,” says the actor. “He himself was quite rebellious, and whenever he preached or read a homily at a family funeral or wedding, he was always wise and spoke in a way that was unusual for someone with a Catholic background. He was quite freewheeling in his ideas and not at all conservative. You would definitely have called him a liberal. But I would stress that my mother’s alertness to questions of faith was much more influential on me. She carried a deeper curiosity about what people call ‘the mystery of faith.’ Her legacy is one of healthy questioning.”
Doubt doesn’t just apply to faith, of course — something Berger understands as an artist. In fact, it’s a state of being he’s come to embrace. “Anybody who seriously [makes] movies or any type of art form, you’re going to wrestle with thinking, ‘What story should I tell?’” It’s a question he takes especially seriously when considering he came up in a German entertainment industry that sometimes was stifling.
“I bumped against a very low ceiling in my home country,” he says. “[That] world is governed by television and not really filmmaking. People are calling for a ‘product’ — they need a ‘product’ to put onto their airwaves. I bumped against that ceiling, and then it felt like the wall had fallen — the Berlin Wall has fallen — and I’m suddenly in front of a colorful bouquet of flowers and just having access to much better stories and much bigger stories.”
He developed “Conclave,” which was adapted by Peter Straughan, around the same time as “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Berger is a big believer that making a movie changes a director — especially in terms of what they want to make next. But after “All Quiet,” although other projects presented themselves, “The profundity of the subject matter [of ‘Conclave’] just kept sticking and bubbling to the top. The script always had a soul, a second layer — it’s not just about a plot or a story; there’s something deep behind it. It just calls you. You don’t find the film — it somehow just finds you. [There’s] doubt — ‘Is this really the right film?’ — but then the need just overpowers you. But that doubt is actually great, because it constantly makes you question every decision — it makes you turn it over seven times until you realize, ‘This is probably the path I should be going in terms of how to make the film.’”
Berger knew he needed Fiennes and sent the actor the script along with an impassioned letter. What intrigued Berger about the character is that, although the mild-mannered Cardinal Lawrence is ostensibly the film’s lead, “He’s not the guy that’s at the center of attention. He’s in every scene and shot of the movie, but he’s sort of a beta. He’s never the loud one. He doesn’t seek the limelight. He’s the quiet guy in the 15th row.”
Berger believed Fiennes could play such a man because “he doesn’t have the most lines [so] you need someone who’s thinking all the time — who lets me into their soul, into their inner life, into their brain, and shows me what he’s thinking in his eyes.”
The quiet dignity that Fiennes brings to Lawrence has precedents in his previous acclaimed performances. (The stoic, tormented lover Almásy from “The English Patient” instantly comes to mind.) But this cardinal’s weariness — combined with his dogged commitment to investigate the leading papal candidates to ensure there are no skeletons in their closets — reveals a grace and humility that feels revelatory. The thrice-Oscar-nominated actor has often flexed his regal manner onscreen, but rarely has he exuded such a weathered decency and nobility. Lawrence does not see greatness in himself, but his determination to successfully execute this conclave — to live up to a spiritual ideal that he himself doesn’t know if he possesses — is downright heroic.
Fiennes has mixed feelings about that reading of Lawrence. “He does not think he’s a hero,” he replies. “He just sees himself as a man trying to iron out problems. Events are forced on him a bit, and he’s confronted with things. The audience might see that there is something heroic in that — I don’t know.” A little later, Fiennes, still pondering the matter, suggests, “We’ve all got aspects of ourselves, we would like things to be different. We know that we sometimes have to just get on with it — he’s just getting on with it.”
To prepare for the role, Fiennes met with religious leaders. One thing he learned in these encounters proved especially illuminating when conceiving his spare performance: “Organizational skills, bureaucratic skills and executive skills is what the Vatican looks for,” he points out. “They look for priests who, of course, have to be true men of God and committed to the Catholic Church. But, specifically, the Vatican wants people who are capable.”
“My faith, I don’t know,” Ralph Fiennes says. “The nearest thing would be the theater — that would be my house of God.”
(Focus Features)
An awards contender focused on the Catholic Church might potentially anger the faithful, but “Conclave” has, blessedly, avoided the kinds of high-profile controversies that have ensnared some of its fellow nominees. Berger never even considered such a possibility: “I certainly didn’t want to take down the Catholic Church. To be honest, not a single moment was I concerned that people would get offended.” However, both he and Fiennes are thrown by the reaction some audiences have had to the movie, celebrating “Conclave” as an addictive, eminently meme-able page-turner. “I don’t even know if I thought of it as a thriller,” says Berger. “People now categorize it as a thriller sometimes — [but] with no guns, no murder. That’s actually wonderful, because it’s certainly an unusual thriller.”
“I don’t really make categories in my head,” Fiennes adds. “My job was to inhabit Lawrence as deeply as I could.” Despite Lawrence’s doubts, he exudes the ineffable sense of someone in deep communion with his faith. It’s an indescribable quality, but it radiates from true believers. So how does one “play” spirituality? It’s something Fiennes doesn’t know if he can answer.
“You can ask yourself what it is to have a belief in a god or a religious system,” Fiennes suggests. “It might involve prayer. What is prayer? What is meditation? What is the divine? What do the teachings of Christ really mean? What is it to be a preacher? What is it to ask people — your community, your congregation — to think about an awareness beyond their immediate material concerns?”
Unlike his character, Fiennes doesn’t pray, but he has tried meditation. “I’m not particularly good at it, keeping it up regularly,” he notes. “But I think there’s a value to be had in going beyond the pattern of repeat thinking, which stops us being aware of the present moment. A certain presentness or a stillness within a person, I think some priests carry that.”
Isabella Rossellini, left, with director Edward Berger on the set of “Conclave.”
(Philippe Antonello / Focus Features)
Both men walked away from religion in their youth, although some of those early experiences have clearly stayed with them — the parallels between faith and art self-evident if one wants to look for them. “Making a movie is searching for something or searching for meaning,” Berger says. “To make the stories that are inside of me, that is, in a way, a journey of faith. And that comes with all kinds of questions you ask yourself.”
Fiennes takes a few moments before responding.
“My faith, I don’t know,” he finally says. “The nearest thing would be the theater — that would be my house of God. Storytelling can be a transformative experience through people recognizing aspects of themselves, empathizing with characters. I think the ancient Greek theater was connected to the worship of the gods. I don’t want to talk too much about God — I think there are other words or other ways of expressing the aspiration of human beings toward some kind of transformation or evolution within their lifespan toward a greater awareness.
“It can happen in a comedy, it can happen in a drama or a tragedy. There’s something about the collective transformation that’s possible in cinema, and in theater, when it works. It doesn’t always work, we know — but when it works, it seems like a worthy pursuit.”
