‘Conclave’ | Anatomy of a Scene

“Hi, My name is Edward Berger and I’m the director of the movie “Conclave.” So we’re about 30 minutes into the movie. We’ve set up the place as the Vatican and the Pope has died. And now Cardinal Lawrence, the character played by Ralph Fiennes, is the Dean of the College of Cardinals, meaning he has to organize the coming election of the new pope. And now it’s his big day because it’s the first day of the conclave, meaning all the doors are being shut. The cardinals are going away into the Sistine Chapel to vote for this next pope. And Ralph Fiennes gives the introductory speech, a homily. And we chose this piece of music at the very beginning. It’s actually the only music that isn’t composed. Everything else is composed in the movie. So it’s the only kind of source music sung by a choir. And it is the only piece of music that is played in the Sistine Chapel for hundreds of years. And I found this fact on a 6:00 AM morning tour. We went to the Sistine Chapel on a guided tour with and it was empty. It’s the only time that it’s empty. If you go at 6:00 AM and the guide told us that this was the piece of music. So I looked it up and found it and found it immensely moving and beautiful. So I decided to put it into the movie. So Ralph starts out the speech in Italian, and Ralph spent a long time practicing Italian, and he was actually very, very adamant. We always had a dialogue coach or someone like an Italian woman there who listened to his diction and everything. She was very satisfied of how he performed it because also he was super meticulous that it felt believable that he’s lived there for 25 years and his practiced Italian for 25 years. So we paid a lot of attention to that. But then at some point, something comes over him, a feeling. And he stops. And then he switches into his natural language, which is English. “But you know all that.” “Let me speak from the heart for a moment.” And delivers a speech about really his true feelings, and that is doubt. He expresses his doubt about his own faith, about his own purpose in the church, about the Church in general, about what he thinks the next pope should be like, someone who accepts doubt and gives in to doubt. And that intuitive speech, that giving into it raises a lot of eyebrows. In this scene, you will notice, we’re usually fairly wide on Ralph in the beginning when he speaks Italian. We’re from behind. We’re from a profile. And then as soon as he speaks from the heart, as soon as his speech changes, we go in for a close up, a very frontal central close up, and the camera starts moving. And then it’s actually just one shot. “Certainty is the great enemy of unity.” “Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.” It’s just one shot, uninterrupted small push in on Ralph as he speaks and he loses himself within his words and he doesn’t notice anyone around him. And only then, once he’s finished. We cut to the reverse of a wide shot of all the cardinals listening. “If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.” “Let us pray that God will grant us a pope who doubts.” The scene sets Ralph Fiennes up as a character to be reckoned with. He delivers the speech that comes from his heart and other Cardinals, especially the ones with ambition to become the next pope, suddenly fear that there’s a new contender in the room. And that is the climax of the scene.