On its surface, “Conclave,” the Vatican-set film starring Ralph Fiennes, looks like one of the stuffiest of this year’s potential Oscar contenders.
Based on a novel by Robert Harris, it chronicles the behind-the-scenes dealings that unfold when the Roman Catholic Church needs to elect a new pope. The cast is mostly male — save for a showstopping turn from Isabella Rossellini — and, with some notable exceptions, largely white. It does not star any hot young things like Timothée Chalamet or Paul Mescal. Instead, it features a murderers’ row of middle-aged character actors. Purely based on subject matter, it seems like the kind of drama that might dominate the Academy Awards in the mid-2000s.
And yet it’s on its way to becoming one of the most memed movies of the year.
In the weeks since the film’s release, I have been shocked and delighted to find it all over my social media feeds. “Conclave” fever has hit the internet.
On X, “Conclave” has been mashed up with “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and “Real Housewives.” Devotees have made fan cams, or artfully edited videos, of the “Conclave” cardinals. One is set to the Charli XCX song “Sympathy Is a Knife” featuring Ariana Grande. The refrain “it’s a knife” is synced to the nasty looks the clergymen give one another. The X user Camille Argentar posted it and wrote, “so much drama in this #conclave and i loved every minute of it.”
Another fan cam focuses on Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence and the song “Diva” by Beyoncé, implying that Lawrence is the diva here. The TikTok account @catholic.memes25 has made multiple “Conclave” videos, including one using “We Both Reached for the Gun” from the musical “Chicago.”
In the lead-up to the presidential election, “Conclave” references were even applied to world events. It’s a movie about choosing a new pope; why not mash it up with the real-life selection of a new leader? In one post, a U.S. paper ballot has the name Aldo Bellini, the character played by Stanley Tucci, written in under the printed names of Donald J. Trump, Kamala Harris and their running mates.
Why does this outward throwback of a movie have such juice among the very online?
These men of the cloth are just as chaotic and messy as the backstabbers of reality television and prime-time soap operas, characters already prominently featured in internet conversations. Their wild expressions easily make for the shorthand of memes. The conclave of “Conclave” has a ton of secrets, which its members wear as close as the glamorous vestments they wield like Liberace’s capes.
Memes thrive on high drama, and “Conclave” has that in spades. Yes, some of the “Conclave” reactions online are driven by a sense of kitsch — it’s amusing to get really excited about a movie about priests — but most of them take advantage of protagonists who seem to live for conflict.
The film, directed by Edward Berger, opens with the death of the reigning pope, putting Lawrence in charge of the election of a new spiritual leader. Cardinals from around the world descend on the Vatican, where they will be sequestered until they reach a decision. It’s as if they are on “Big Brother” except they are all ostensibly pious. “Ostensibly” is a key word here: Most of these men are more interested in advancing themselves than advancing the cause of God.
From the moment they start arriving, Berger establishes what a cliquey bunch this is. Lawrence and his pal, the American liberal Aldo Bellini (Stanley Tucci), roll their eyes when the boorish Italian Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) approaches. Tedesco represents the conservative arm of the church, but he’s a villain with flair. After all, he is constantly vaping, the plume of artificial smoke adding an extra flourish to his blasé cattiness. He’s Lisa Rinna in a zucchetto, the cardinal’s small red skullcap.
The memes likening “Conclave” to Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls” (2004) are, in some ways, the most spot on. Early in “Mean Girls,” the outcast Janis explains how the social hierarchy of the suburban high school plays out across the cafeteria. The same dynamics are evident in “Conclave”: Some of the juiciest betrayals take place in the Vatican’s dining hall. The cardinals self-segregate by region, the groups sniping at one another from afar. John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay orchestrates the humiliation of a colleague by reviving a scandal from the past. Later, Tremblay is the one being shamed when Rossellini’s Sister Agnes reads him for filth.
These fabulous takedowns and gasp-inducing revelations are interspersed with scenes of the cardinals submitting their votes for the new pope when they retreat to the impeccably recreated Sistine Chapel. The chatty clerics are mostly silent, but the tension comes from the ways they scribble down names and the furtive glances they exchange. Think of reality TV when contestants determine who is moving on to the next round of competition. These “Conclave” scenes play like the tribal council from “Survivor” or the Rose Ceremony from “The Bachelor,” only against the backdrop of Michelangelo. Slowly the number of contenders actually in the running for pope is whittled down.
Berger and his actors nevertheless treat the material with gravity. “Conclave” has a lot to say about human ambition and how that conflicts with a divine calling. In the end, the message is surprisingly open-minded, given the church’s conservatism, all the spilled secrets yielding an institution that is potentially kinder. Yet because the action is propelled by the kind of shocking moments that would be at home in the shows you watch when you’re sprawled across the couch with wine and junk food, this seemingly staid drama has an unexpected appeal.
We like this type of TV (or movies that resemble this type of TV) because we like seeing characters act in ways most of us would never dare. We enjoy seeing them conniving. “Conclave” grafts that onto a world that feels even more distant than rich people in Beverly Hills or New York City. Priests are supposed to hold themselves to a high moral standard, but these priests are just as nasty as the rest of us. In the words of many a reality TV baddie, they are not here to make any friends.
Ultimately, what the memes tell us about “Conclave” is that despite its old-fashioned exterior, it’s an inherently modern story of people behaving badly and looking fabulous while doing so. Maybe that’s blasphemous, but it sure is entertaining.
The post Why the Messy Cardinals of ‘Conclave’ Make for Great Memes appeared first on New York Times.
