Conclave, the papal election drama starring Ralph Fiennes, could’ve easily been as dry as a communion wafer. Yet via a cohort of diva cardinals thirstier for chaos and mess than any cast in The Real Housewives franchise, the film has generated a meme-making online fandom (the self-named Conclave hive) who’ve blessed the movie with a far more appropriate moniker: “Mean Girls for popes”.
Packed with subterfuge, secrecy, backstabbing and division, Conclave – which scooped eight Academy Award nominations across editing, screenplay, design, score and performance categories – asks the question of who actually deserves the inordinate power of being Pope of the Catholic Church. No one hungry enough to want it, it argues. In the hands of director Edward Berger and screenwriter Peter Straughan, who adapted Robert Harris’s novel of the same name, Conclave takes a centuries-old theological tradition and transforms it into a political thriller – without the politicians. It’s for this reason that it should take home the Best Picture Oscar this weekend.
