Behind the Scenes: Conclave

IBC

A game of thrones in the Vatican lensed by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine

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For the man who is deemed to be God’s representative on earth the route to the top is a naked grab for power. The secretive process by which this is decided among a group of Cardinals in the Vatican is called conclave, and its structure forms the spine of a new murder mystery from director Edward Berger (All Quite On The Western Front) teaming up with French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine (Ammonite, Jackie)

It is based on the novel by thriller writer Robert Harris but Fontaine says he didn’t think of the film as a whodunnit.

“The moment you start to think in terms of genre your mind is suddenly closing doors or opening others. I always want to start from a much wider approach.”

One of the first conversations he had with Berger was about The Parallax View the bleak conspiracy thriller from 1974 by Alan J Pakula. “Edward didn’t want to mimic it at all but just to notice the way this film in particular and more generally 1970s American movies are able to convey a sense of claustrophobia and paranoia.

“I never thought in terms of mystery or suspense but in terms of tension and expression of doubt as seen exclusively from the point of view of Cardinal Lawrence.

Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes is the Cardinal charged with leading the Papal selection. It’s clear that he struggles with the weight of responsibility and begins to question his faith.

The opening scenes include a 360-degree Steadicam showing the chaos that Lawrence is facing but after this the film’s language is much more restrained.

“The sense of power had to be translated by the composition of the frames. We had to suggest as opposed to stress what we thought viewers should know. We wanted to translate the sense of unease caused by this somewhat suffocating atmosphere into the visuals. We extensively used the widescreen 2.40:1 aspect ratio, either by packing the frames or by isolating characters.”

Aside from an oblique reference to The Parallax View and the opening of The Godfather, Fontaine says he avoided other movie or paintings.

“I try to shy away from having too strong references – they can box you in,” he says. “I did watch The Two Popes (a fact based Papal succession drama from 2019 starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce) and luckily it had nothing to do with what we had in mind. The other reason why I wouldn’t want too many references is you get easily overwhelmed by how good a reference can be making it hard to move forward.”

On an early morning private tour of the Sistine Chapel he was amazed by a strong sense of presence “weight of history” that inspired the shape of light in the movie.

“When you receive a script in which there’s a church in every other scene the temptation is to use the familiar images in our head,” he says. “Wouldn’t it be great to have shafts of light and haze from the stained glass? But the moment you do that it doesn’t feel right. Instead, we went for an almost documentary look helped by fact that the blinds and veils in each room were down, so there was barely any daylight coming through.”

However, filming in the real Sistine Chapel is out of bounds so sets were built at nearby Cinecittà studios. Founded in 1937 with the help of Benito Mussolini to support the Italian film industry, it was partially destroyed by Allied bombs during World War II. Rebuilt by the 1950s, it became one of Europe’s premiere studios and the largest studio on the continent.

“We didn’t mind building our own Vatican even if we were using some old fascist architecture,” Fontaine says in an oblique hint to the film’s critique of male dominated political power structures.

The production design team were able to restore an existing Vatican set in storage at Cinecittà.  According to production designer Suzie Davies, “Rome and the Vatican are beautiful, traditional, ornate, gilded and ancient but we also incorporated the very symmetrical, sharp-edged designs of the fascist era in Italy. The contrast between them is visually arresting.”

The movie version of the Casa Santa Marta, the residence housing cardinals during the conclave, is intended to feel almost like a posh prison. Fontaine enhances a hermetically sealed feeling using shallow depth of field and film noir techniques.

“My biggest challenge was the fact that the cardinals are not only locked down inside the Vatican but that even daylight barely comes in through the shutters. The nuances in the lighting style depended on the level of intimacy that Cardinal Lawrence has with each of the protagonists.”

Davies worked with Fontaine to help deliver the idea of opposing themes which balance light and dark, honesty and lies, gold and silver, contemporary and traditional, male and female. Casa Santa Marta is a visually darker world with linear patterns and darker lighting. In contrast, the Sistine Chapel was lighter and had a sense of freedom.

Having shot on Red cameras since lensing Rust And Bone on a Red Epic in 2012, choosing the latest model, V-Raptor 8K VV came naturally. To take the edge off the camera’s sharp resolution he carried a set of Tribe7 Blackwing 20.7mm to 137mm vintage lenses and added in a layer of film look grain in post.

“During prep we were thinking about how to show small humans in front of massive architecture. “I use the widescreen aspect ratio 2.40 to do this and often using framing characters in negative space that remind you of their scale of their environment. Since the cardinals and sisters are used to behaving well and keeping their feelings hidden, a good way to see how they express their feelings is by showing how they use their hands, which is why we have a lot of close-ups of hands.”

Vying for Papal supremacy are Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto and Lucian Msamati playing a Nigerian priest, who could become the first African pontiff in history.  A Catholic priest from Afghanistan (played by Carlos Diehz) also awakens racial prejudice. Isabella Rossellini’s nun pricks the conscience of the Church’s male hierarchy.

“Cinecittà blew me away,” Fontaine says. “You can just feel the history when standing on the stages and knowing that Fellini and Antonioni and Roberto Rossellini – (Isabella’s father) - shot there.”

A sequence in which more than 100 cardinals cast their votes over three days presented the filmmakers with a challenge. Since each cardinal writes a name and drops a ballot in an urn the question was how to make it compelling each time?  “We storyboarded and pre-vized so ensure that each of the six sequences would be unique,” he explains.

A shot of the cardinals under umbrellas during rain is perhaps the film’s most iconic image. The location was a French property in Rome called Villa Medici, home of the French Academy’s artists residency. They didn’t have enough actors or extras dressed as cardinals so Fontaine shot a number of different plates and comped them together in post “to make them look like a sea of cardinals all in forward movement together.”

The scene was also intended to be far longer he says, “but ended up in the movie reduced to this image, which perhaps gives it a stronger resonance.”