here’s something hilarious, and wonderful, about seeing actors you know striding importantly around a soundstage version of the Vatican while dressed in official cardinal garb. That’s the magic of Edward Berger’s papal drama or at least part of it. Stanley Tucci wearing his red Zucchetto tilted jauntily toward the back of his head, ‘30s newsboy-style? Sign me up! Ralph Fiennes indicating that the metaphorical burden on his shoulders is much, much greater than the actual weight of his scarlet capelet? I’m all over it! the story of a huddle of cardinals scheming and counter-scheming as they , is great fun.
It is also fiction. (The screenplay was adapted, from , by Peter Straughan.) But even as it captures the allure of Vatican style—the swingy gold ecclesiastical necklaces, those soft red leather slippers—it makes a more overarching serious point: the must change, or risk becoming as desiccated as the bones of a long-dead saint.
Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, a papal dignitary who, upon the death of the big boss, the Holy Father, is responsible for gathering all the word’s cardinals at the Vatican to elect a replacement. This responsibility makes him miserable: not long ago, he’d tried to slip out of his vaunted position, citing a crisis of faith—about the Church, not God. But the boss said no.
Now there’s no stopping the stream of cardinals from all over the world. ( was filmed largely at Cinecittà Studios, and its facsimiles of the Vatican’s painte.
