Conclave: Gossip, Color and Corridor of Power

There is a peculiar silence that falls over Conclave. A silence not born of reverence, but of observation and of watching, not only each other, but oneself: how one moves, how one is perceived, what one permits to be perceived. This film has easily entered the repertoire of my all-time favourites.

Still daunted and drenched in Edward Berger’s haunting world of All Quiet on the Western Front, I entered Conclave anticipating another piercing revelation about the Church and what might lie ahead. And it is that—yet it is also more. Set within the sacred and austere walls of the Vatican, Conclave is ostensibly a political thriller about the election of a new Pope. But truly, it is about the kinds of power that do not announce themselves. Power that slips through whispers, glances, omissions. Power that is not held so much as worn, and even then, not always by choice. I wonder: do we all, regardless of faith, culture, identity, hunger for power in some quiet, unspoken way?

The film follows Cardinal Lawrence, rendered with quiet precision by Ralph Fiennes, a man who does not want power. But in a story like Conclave, his lack of enthusiasm makes him the most dangerous presence in the room to those who desire it most. When the Pope dies unexpectedly, a conclave is summoned, and Cardinal Lawrence is appointed to oversee it. The process brings together over a hundred cardinals, bound by sacred ritual and tradition, to elect the next Pope under one rising smoke.

But what unfolds in these cloistered days is not just procedure ;it is an unspoken warfare, the surfacing of splintered ideologies held together by the weight of legacy.

What I love most about Berger is his refusal of spectacle. He is not interested in dramatics but in restraint: in how people behave under pressure without ever breaking decorum. That, to me, is more revealing, more honest, acutely mirroring the way those in the highest positions of power move in our world today. There are no outbursts, no rapid cuts. Instead, the film leans into stillness and a tension that accumulates slowly to examine how power is performed, and who is witnessing the performance.

The Political Theology of Gossips

What is most fascinating, and perhaps what lingers longest in my mind even after quite some time removed from watching Conclave, is its destigmatization of gossip. For so long, gossip has been regarded as petty or frivolous, and we tend to forget it is one of the most effective engines of intelligence in institutional spaces, giving nuances to ideas, events, and thoughts that overarching systems can never fully capture.

Gossip is how Cardinal Lawrence uncovers alliances, scandals, and fractures within the Church that are never spoken aloud in official chambers. It is how he learns of a potential papal child of Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) through an affair, defying the Church's values. It is how he learns Cardinal Tremblay's corruption (John Lithgow), bribing his fellow Cardinals into voting for him and taking strides to delegitimize Cardinal Adeyemi's papacy prospects by humiliation. And what is so striking is that the film does not mock this nor reduce it to drama. Berger treats gossip as political currency and strategic literacy, especially for someone like Cardinal Lawrence, who has inherited a weighty responsibility.

Perhaps most importantly, Conclave attempts to push back the weaponization of gossip–Cardinal Lawrence does not use knowledge gained through this tool of discernment to advance his power, but to seek truth. It is rare to see gossip taken seriously in a film. Rarer still to see it treated with gravity. We are used to seeing gossip gender-coded as feminine, and by extension, as frivolous. Conclave quietly undoes this.

It is is time to make gossip great again.

Red and Blue: What Remains After Power

Visually, Conclave operates within a precise colour palette. Stéphane Fontaine's cinematography builds a symbolic world out of colour and containment. Most scenes are dominated by the rich, deep red of the Cardinals' vestments, adorned in gold, signifying authority and unity. But the colour functions not as pageantry, but as camouflage. The red conceals and flattens the differences between those who wear it.

As with any institution, however, there is factionalism, and a detonating bomb outside the Sistine Chapel may have thrust ideological cracks into the spotlight.

In the next scene following the disruption, all the Cardinals gather in what appears to be an auditorium where Cardinal Lawrence reveals that it was a suicide bomb, killing some and injuring many. We have seen this in space in preceding scenes : quiet, with blue chairs and a hushed ambience. But this time, it is impossible to ignore the striking contrast the red vestments of the Cardinals draped against the blue. Suddenly, red reveals itself. It was never neutral. It was always doing something: declaring allegiance, hiding fractures, enforcing order. And blue, in its absence of symbolism, begins to feel more honest.

This red-and-blue dichotomy plays out again when the traditionalist Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) delivers a scathing line: “Here at least we see the doctrine of relativism so beloved by our liberal brothers.” He says it with disdain, denouncing the more progressive Cardinals for envisioning a capacious Catholic Church sympathetic to other religions, and claiming that the Church is “heading towards a religious war.” It’s a moment of immediate clarity. Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) pushes back: “Shame on you.” Here, the ideological rift is laid bare. As an audience, we know that the vote for the next Pope is no longer just about succession; it’s about the kind of world the Church wants to affirm. Red stands in for tradition, certainty, and legacy. Blue becomes the space of ambiguity and the unknown.

What intrigues me most is that Berger never tells us what side he’s on. He neither valorizes the progressives nor condemns the conservatives. Instead, he shows how both are caught in a structure too old to bend easily, yet one that still contains potential for capacious thinking. The Vatican, in Berger’s rendering, is less a place of faith than a place contesting change. And it sits in that tension: unresolved, just watching.

What Remains?

Conclave is not a loud film. It isn’t interested in spectacle or even resolution, but rather in nuance and capacious thinking. How can people, even in the highest places, live with contradictions they cannot name? And while there are characters positioned as antagonists, like Cardinal Tremblay or Cardinal Tedesco, there is no single villain, no clear hero. Just a room full of men in high positions, each with something to protect or something to change, all bound by rules older than memory and older than themselves. And as the smoke rises once more, you begin to question the theatrics of it all, of all the highest and most powerful institutions, and the potential performability of belief. The choreography of belief.

If you were to ask me what Conclave is about, I genuinely have no idea—because it is everything, and nothing too specific, all at once. But I do know it begs the question: When all is stripped down of its materiality, who still believes?