What are the new cardinals chosen by Francis like?Who is in charge of the Church and how is it organized internally?"God works through non-programmable events, 'that' by chance this happened to me," says Pope Francis.The BAFTAs, the British Film Awards, took place on Sunday, February 16. Conclavethe film by Robert Harris, won the award for Best Picture. From a technical point of view, it has notable merits, backed by important awards: it has won the Golden Globe for best screenplay, has won four BAFTA awards and has eight Oscar nominations. With a budget of $20 million, it has so far grossed five times that amount.
Conclave tells the story of the election of a new pope following the death of the pontiff. As the cardinals gather at the Vatican to vote, intrigues, secret alliances and power struggles emerge that reveal the influence of earthly interests in a process supposedly guided by more spiritual interests. As the suspense builds, the film explores the tension between tradition and change within the Church, leading to an unlikely and controversial denouement.
Lack of realism
Regardless of its technical virtues, the film offers a skewed and thoroughly worldly view of the Church. It presents the idea that its future depends on accepting moral relativism and assuming the wokeThis implies the rejection of the traditional family model, the acceptance of divorce, contraception and gender ideology.
The cardinals portrayed in the film lack faith, hope and charity. They are lonely characters, marked by spiritual or moral crises, driven solely by ambition, pettiness and the lust for power. Their conversations do not reflect pastoral concerns or a Christian vision of the good of the Church, but revolve exclusively around political maneuvering and personal interests. In short, any trace of a supernatural perspective is completely absent.
If the Church were composed only of sinners as depraved as those portrayed, it could not survive its own leaders. It is the usual mistake of talking about the sinners in the Church and completely forgetting about the saints, who do perform heroic deeds worthy of being brought to the big screen. Conclave what it offers is the typical malicious caricature that, behind a dynamic and entertaining story, seeks to discredit Catholic ideas.
A fantasy and ridiculous ending
The plot is so implausible that even a person as far removed from religion as Carlos Boyero, the film critic of El PaísIn his review, he pointed out that "as the ending approaches, you sense that it is going to be complicated, that the conjurer has no more doves or rabbits left under his hat. And the ending is empty nonsense. I'm not going to make you spoilers (how I detest this term so abusively used), but I suffer an attack of astonishment and laughter at the audacious nonsense with which they have resolved the long and stormy intrigue".
The end of the film is ridiculous (spoiler alert): the elected Pope turns out to be intersexual and his appointment symbolizes the idea that the Church can only overcome its internal divisions through a figure who embodies in himself the differences of our time.
Despite the awards the film has been collecting and the undoubted marketing and production effort that accompanies it, Conclave offers nothing new, nor interesting, nor even plausible, in its effort to draw a Church tailored to the more or less dominant ideologies of the current social panorama.
