Intrigue during a papal conclave

  It's hardly a surprise to watch a movie in which the selection of a new pope bristles with intrigue, personal ambition, and conflicting agendas, crosscurrents made more potent by their connection to ardently held beliefs. After all, cardinals are people, too.

   Basing his movie on a novel by Robert Harris, director Edward Berger (All Quiet on the Western Front) slowly develops the movie's political maneuvering as conflict emerges between those who want to keep the Church on a liberal track and those who yearn for the rigidity of the past.

   Berger pays meticulous attention to detail and relies heavily on a terrific set of performances. As dean of the College of Cardinals, Ralph Fiennes' Cardinal Lawrence has been assigned the unenviable task of running the fractious conclave at which a pope will be elected.  Election requires a two-thirds majority.

  The role fits Fiennes, an actor capable of great precision,  perfectly. A man of balance, Lawrence sides with the liberals but tries to maintain neutrality. To add further complication, he's also in the midst of a personal crisis of faith. He also must fight off his own candidacy for a job he insists he doesn't want. Others are more transparent. 

    Other key players are Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), an opponent of the constrictions of traditionalism, and  Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), a churchman who's unsettled by the rise of Third World cardinals. Tedesco wants the papacy returned to Italy -- with him as pope, of course. 

   Other cardinals include the Nigerian Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), an early frontrunner who, if elected, would become the first Black pontiff. Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), a popular American, has his eye on the papal throne and makes no bones about it.

    Gradually, Cardinal Benitez from Kabul (Carlos Diehz) becomes a dark horse, an unknown who was a last-minute appointment by the late pope.     

    Essentially a movie about cloistered men, Conclave features Isabella Rossellini as Sister Agnes, a nun who reluctantly insinuates herself into the proceedings.

    Berger creates the same kind of interest found in the novel: We try to guess who'll emerge as the Church's leader. 

   Credit Berger and his team for creating first-class atmospherics -- both in terms of the movie's edgy score and a secluded church environment dominated by the proscribed behavior of ritual and majesty. 

    I had read Harris' novel and viewed its ending as more of a provocative punch line than a satisfying conclusion. The movie, which adheres closely to the novel,  has the same politically charged ending (no fair telling), and the third act tends to go a little over-the-top.

    By the end, the screenplay (by Harris and Peter Straughan) has expanded its thematic reach to a near  breaking point, but Conclave remains one of the most crisply acted and involving ensemble pieces of the year. 

 

Bob's Cinema Diary: 9/6/19 -- Satanic Panic, Vita & Virginia

I'm never sure whether films have real-world impact, but if Satanic Panic does alter anyone's behavior, it probably will be America's legion of pizza delivery people. In this case, a pizza delivery girl (Hayley Griffith) makes a delivery to a wealthy area that's way out of her normal zone. When the recipient disappears after refusing to tip, she bangs on the door, hoping to shame the stony-faced jerk who stiffed her. Our heroine might normally have gone on her way, but her moped’s nearly out-of-gas and she's afraid she won't make it home. Entering the house through a conveniently open side door, the pizza girl quickly becomes ensnared in a meeting of devil worshipers who want to turn her into a human sacrifice. Purposely overstated performances, particularly by the group's head witch (Rebecca Romijn) seem intended to give a comic spin to the proceedings, but this kind of acting also can create an amateurish feeling that may not have been what director Chelsea Stardust hoped to achieve. Gore gluttons will find enough plasma to satisfy, but too much of the movie simply doesn't work, either as straight-ahead horror or macabre comedy. Ruby Modine supplies a witty spark that's otherwise missing from a movie that aims to produce crowd-pleasing moments for horror buffs who are well enough versed in genre tropes to recognize when the movie is poking fun at them. All else aside, it may be reassuring to know that even Satanists are sensible enough to crave pizza, thus prompting the movie's most intriguing aside: Ritual sacrifices of young virgins never should be performed on an empty stomach.

Vita & Virginia

Vita & Virginia, a well-appointed look at the lesbian relationship between Vita Sackville-West (Gemma Arterton) and Virginia Woolf (Elizabeth Debicki), too often fails to break its period-piece shackles. The Bloomsbury scene depicted by director Chanya Button doesn't prove interesting or eccentric enough to shock us with its rejection of bourgeois convention. Both Vita and Virginia are married, Vita to a husband (Darren Dixon) who indulges his own same-sex interests but fears that his boldly flirtatious wife will jeopardize his public standing. Virginia's husband Leonard (Peter Ferdinando) shows more tolerance for his wife's inclinations. He publishes her books, loves her and even believes that she might benefit from a fling with Sackville-West. Isabella Rossellini shows up as Lady Sackville, a woman who clearly disapproves of Vita's undisguised recklessness. Arterton approaches her role with crisply delivered openness; Debicki's Virginia seems depressed and dreary, perhaps to suggest the despair that ultimately led Woolf to suicide. There's nothing wrong with Vita & Virginia that more unruliness wouldn't have cured. But Vita & Virginia seems too intent on becoming a movie of certifiable cultural significance to feel as if it's full of new insights.

Ingrid Bergman, Up Close and Personal

Swedish director Stig Bjorkman has assembled a documentary that pays tribute to one of the screen's greatest stars, Ingrid Bergman. Using letters Bergman wrote to friends, as well as interviews with her children, Bjorkman fashions Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, a bio-doc that reminds us of two things: How breathtakingly beautiful Bergman was on screen and what an independent spirit she was off camera. Fortunately, for Bjorkman (and us) Bergman took lots of home movies that show her in a variety of settings. Bergman's letters and portions of her diaries are read by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, who intensifies Bergman's presence in the film. Bergman's life wasn't always easy: She was three when her mother died and 12 when her father passed away. She had a busy romantic life, and survived a major scandal when she had a child with Italian director Roberto Rossellini before the two were married -- to each other, that is. Suddenly, the angel of the cinema became the whore of the tabloids. Bergman and Rossellini had three children, including actress Isabella Rossellini. Retired television journalist Pia Lindstrom, also interviewed in the film, was the child of Bergman and Swedish surgeon Petter Lindstrom. Because of career-induced absences Bergman probably didn't qualify as the ideal mother, but her children mostly speak fondly of her. They seem to remember her more as a fun friend than a parent. As we learn, Bergman may have had only one abiding love in her life -- the camera. No wonder, then, that she talks reverentially of working with Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and Alfred Hitchcock. For a time, she really was living the dream -- and millions of moviegoers lived it with her.

She mopped her way to success

Jennifer Lawrence shines. The rest of the movie? Not so much.

I've enjoyed the movies that director David O. Russell has made with an ensemble cast that capitalizes on the considerable talents of Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro. I was immoderately enthusiastic about both Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, which is why it saddens me to report that the third time is not quite a charm.

Russell's Joy, which showcases Lawrence, crosses the line from buoyant and bracing to marginal and disappointing.

First a word about Lawrence, who brings more than the required depth to the character of Joy Mangano, the woman who invented the Miracle Mop and built a small commercial empire around the kind of products that are pitched on channels such as QVC.

Mangano exemplifies the brand of entrepreneurial spirit and salesmanship that's required to reach shoppers armed with coffee cups in one hand and remote controls in the other.

But even Lawrence's performance, a mixture of discovery and determination in the context of a supremely dysfunctional family environment, can't quite overcome the weaknesses of an episodic script by Russell and co-writer Annie Mumolo (Bridesmaids).

On top of that, the rest of the cast doesn't always click, and that includes Cooper as head of QVC.

Russell's regulars are joined by Isabella Rossellini, perhaps miscast as a wealthy woman who dates Joy's divorced dad and finances Joy's early efforts. Virginia Madsen plays Joy's soap-opera addicted mother, a woman who seldom leaves her bedroom, and Diane Ladd appears as the grandmother who believes in Joy's exceptionalism.

Once again, Russell focuses on a chaotic family. De Niro's struggling character, has to move in with his daughter when his second wife gives him the boot. This means sharing the basement with Joy's ex-husband (Edgar Ramirez), a guy who fancies himself an up-and-coming singer.

Joy, who evidently takes in relatives the way others take in stray cats, soldiers on, sometimes arousing the jealousy of her half-sister Peggy (Elisabeth Rohm).

Pleasures pop up amid the story's clutter: Joy making her first awkward appearance on TV, for example. Or the way Rudy, no expert on relationships, criticizes his daughter for not having what he regards as a "proper" divorce.

But Russell too often gets wrapped up in the nuts and bolts of Joy's business, matters that -- at least in my book -- qualify as of minor interest. Did you know that the Miracle Mop, introduced at a price of $19.95, featured a 300-foot cotton loop that could be wrung out without actually touching the mop head? Do you care?

A late-picture introduction of legal troubles doesn't generate much suspense. We know Joy will emerge triumphant.

Moreover, the need to keep us rooting for Joy constrains any satiric bent that Russell might have brought to the world of home shopping.

Say this: Lawrence holds this somewhat scattered movie together, but it's Russell himself who raised the bar with two previous movies: This one doesn't quite measure up -- and I say that as someone who very much hoped it would.