This year, director Edward Berger moved from the literal battlefields of Oscar-winner All Quiet on the Western Front to the metaphorical battlefields of a papal election of Conclave. For him, the thematic switch brought with it the allure of an entirely different filming experience and an intimate, character-driven story.
But the classic filmmaking bravura remains the same.
“[Conclave is] a very intimate story but with a propulsive plot and, at the same time, a wonderful interior journey that Ralph’s [Fiennes] character goes on. There was also line in the script that really interested me,” Berger explained. “Peter [Straughan, screenwriter] quoted this German philosopher: ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.’ That sort of was at the core of all the characters, and that was interesting to me.”
Conclave stars Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, a British cardinal serving as Dean during a conclave or the election of a new pope. Throughout the film, Lawrence discovers multiple instances of lies, corruption, cover-ups, and backstabbing as he battles his own questions of faith while struggling to find someone who can win an election. Berger and his editor Nick Emerson had the great fortune of an insanely talented cast of international actors to lend gravitas and authenticity to the proceedings that, in other hands, could feel over the top.
While audiences have raved about Fiennes’ career-best performance, it’s the scene-stealing supporting turn by Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes that leaves everyone begging for more.
“I think we probably put every shot of her in the movie. She’s just a quiet observer in the background. Whenever she’s mentioned in a scene, we made sure to shoot and edit the close up or even two close ups of her into the movie, just to make sure that we are also with her besides Ralph. That we see what she’s thinking,” Berger explained.
When working with the actors during technical rehearsals, Berger relies on the actors to embody their characters and play the scene in the moment during interactions with their cast mates. Sometimes, he found that he needed to potentially reframe a scene depending on how the actor played it differently during shooting versus during technical rehearsals.
After that, it’s all up to Emerson and the edit.
“From my point of view, it’s a dream come true to be working all these amazing performances. When you’re there, the ability that that gives you of having the strength of these performances is that, if we decide that we want to look at this person at this moment or this person at this moment, you’re always going to be able to do that,” Emerson said. “When I’m editing, I love to be guided by the actors. I love to follow their performances and let that sort of drive, maybe in the early cuts, the decisions you’re making. How lucky am I to be looking at these performances all day, you know?”
When speaking with artisans on Conclave, one thing stands out above all: Edward Berger comes to set with a very specific vision for his films. The creative teams, including Emerson, then take their cues from Berger to help assemble the film to align with his vision.
For example, Berger suggested to Emerson that the pace and timing of the shots should echo the paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s such as All the President’s Men or The Parallax View. Once filming began, Berger delivered Emerson a set of storyboards and shot lists that would drive the sequencing of the film. That preparation and overall vision for the finished product, plus the abundance of classic material from these fantastic actors, simplified Emerson’s job as editor.
Emerson also needed to reinforce the criticality of Catholic rituals, a central tenet of the faith, through the edit. He replicates scenes of the conclave voting over and over, showing the exact steps each cardinal follows as they step up to cast their papal vote. In later scenes, he shortcuts the voting process to avoid monotony, but he relied on Berger’s identical, near-ritual lensing of these moments to underscore the fact that they’re following the exact same procedure each time, even if we don’t see the events in totality.
The pacing, in fact, was largely driven by Fiennes and the actions his character undertakes at any given moment. Berger refers to it as following Fiennes’s “heartbeat” throughout the film, but the key to understanding the tension-driven pacing lives in Fiennes’s breathing patterns.
“It’s powerful when Ralph suddenly holds his breath, when he suddenly stops breathing. The audience understands that he must be concentrating, so you lean in. It’s little things like that,” Berger confides. “Those breaths, they just put you so much into his point of view, so that you’re just there in the seat beside him. You’re seeing everything through his eyes, for sure.”
Conclave is now playing in theaters everywhere.
