When Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy screenwriter Peter Straughan began to adapt Robert Harris’s papal potboiler Conclave for the big screen, the main character was, in common with the book, an Italian cardinal called Lomeli. But once Edward Berger, the director of multiple Bafta and Oscar winner All Quiet On The Western Front, came on board to direct, pragmatism and the idea to cast Ralph Fiennes in the lead saw the script reworked to centre on Cardinal Lawrence, an Englishman tasked with supervising the top-secret conclave to elect the next pope.
Since premiering at Telluride in August, Conclave has proved a critical and commercial hit, racking up $9.3m (£7.5m) at the UK and Ireland box office for Black Bear and $32m in the US for Focus Features, as well as earning 12 Bafta nominations. Set inside the confines of the Vatican, Berger’s film is a gripping, deliciously wordy political thriller, full of backstabbing clergy and scheming contenders, with Fiennes’ conflicted cardinal starring with Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow and Isabella Rossellini.
In late January, the day before Conclave was nominated for eight Oscars including best picture and leading actor, its director and star joined Screen International over Zoom — the former from a Soho edit suite, the latter from his central London home — to discuss the power of curiosity, the vagaries of faith and the benefits of having a screenwriter on set.
Screen International: Did the decision to make the central character English come before or after you thought of Ralph for the role?
Edward Berger: We wrote the first drafts as an Italian character. Then we wanted to keep our minds open to wherever this person could come from; any country that he could be, believably, a Catholic cardinal. But at some point, when we felt close to being ready, I woke up and called Tessa [Ross, producer] and Peter, and said, “I think it should be Ralph.” Because the nationality [of the character] doesn’t matter, it’s more an inner quality. And Ralph struck me as a person — I didn’t know him — who could play someone who has a rich internal life and express that with his eyes, and invite the audience into whatever is going on behind them: the doubts, the troubled interior life. So Ralph felt like the perfect fit. There is, of course, a practical reason that you’re not going to get this movie made with a German or Italian actor, but the real reason is this rich interior life I felt Ralph could portray very well.
So the idea of Ralph came to you in a dream?
Berger: I wouldn’t say in a dream. It was an inspiring morning cup of tea when we started talking about cast. We sent it to him a few weeks later, he read it quickly and was so open to the first discussion.
Ralph Fiennes: I think I said, “Look, he’s Italian, but I can’t ever be Italian. Either I do the dodgy version, which is the accent, or we have no attempt to sound Italian, but we tell the world I’m Italian.” Edward said, “We’ll just make him English.” Then my first thought was: is that plausible? Are there English cardinals? Yes, there are. Not very many. Could an English cardinal become dean of the Vatican? It’s not impossible. I come from a Catholic upbringing. I had a few monks and priests in my background.
Was it the story, character or political thriller aspect that initially grabbed you?
Fiennes: It was combined, the journey of Lawrence. As Edward said, the interiority of a part, which on film is always a currency. Then the thriller nature: who’s going to get the gig? That was a complete pageturner. I’d not read the book at that point. And we all loved the provocation of the film, which is [my character’s] homily about the value of doubt.
Edward has talked about how he has doubts as a director and has learned to embrace them. Is doubt something you can relate to, Ralph?
Fiennes: Most actors have terrible self-doubt. You need to be confident, but the doubt is lurking. So it’s a constant seesaw of moments of confidence and moments of self-doubt. But that doubt, in the context of having a religious belief, I interpret as questioning. The reason I, at 13, said to my mother, “I don’t want to go to Mass anymore”, was the lack of discussion. The Catholic faith says, “It’s this, it’s this, it’s this.” You can’t question it.
When you have structures that are rigorous in certainty, it’s not something that evolves or grows. Lawrence is, in a quiet way, an enlightened cardinal who sees the Church must grow, must open — that’s why he’s allied to Stanley’s character. Simply speaking, I like the idea that one questions. You have doubt. Nothing is certain.
Had you seen All Quiet On The Western Front at that stage?
Fiennes: I had seen some episodes of Mother’s Milk. Is that the name of the series?
Berger: Patrick Melrose.
Fiennes: Melrose, yeah, which I loved. When I met Edward, I had not seen All Quiet. Quickly I was able to see it and was blown away by it. So, my excitement about working with Edward was doubled because I found All Quiet On The Western Front incredibly moving. On all levels, it was a film that made a huge impression.
Berger: What you said to me that I really enjoyed was, “You seem to be interested in the actors’ faces, or in the characters’ faces.” I didn’t know that consciously, but you can tell in Conclave, a lot of it just plays on Ralph’s face and what he sees.
Conclave is very cinematic. Did Edward talk about how he was going to shoot it?
Fiennes: No. I think the best ways to understand each other as actor and director is not necessarily to talk about how you’re going to make the film, but just to be with someone and talk. I felt we bonded, particularly on our trip to visit Robert Harris. We were driven out to Robert Harris’s house in Berkshire, where he gave us the most fantastic lunch that seemed to go on and on. It was delightful. We got there early, so we sat in a local village church and talked. But we weren’t talking directly about the film. What I want to feel as an actor is, how sensitive is the director to the infinite complications of what it is to be human?
Peter’s writing is so great because it’s succinct, it’s economic, it allows the echo chamber of a person to be felt in and around the dialogue, in the face or in pauses. It’s not just the words. As an actor, you want to know the director has a sensitivity to all the shifting currents that are possible in the face of the actor. I felt from the way Edward talked, there was an openness to him. And that feeling was twice as present on set. He doesn’t arrive with a fixed view. He has ideas, he’s prepared — but he’s excited and curious about what the actors are doing and what they can do. To be held by that present-tense curiosity by a director is quite rare.
Berger We had a lot of dinners in Rome, leafing through the script. And you talk about the scene, not the way you are going to shoot it, but what are we focusing on? What are we trying to say? You come with your feeling and Ralph comes with his and somewhere in that process you learn from each other. As a director, there are too many people, too much money and too little time to not be prepared. But you must be alert to new ideas, because it’s a team. We all have ideas and some of them are great and some of mine are bad and you need to pick the right ones. They can come from everywhere, especially from the people who need to inhabit this person on screen.
Ralph, you’re also executive producer. What did that entail?
Fiennes: Being an indispensable advisor to Edward [laughs].
Berger: I would send every casting idea to Ralph. Maybe he has a history with someone, maybe he doesn’t quite see the person. Luckily, he liked everyone we proposed.
Fiennes: Edward also gave me the space to be opinionated about how accurate we needed to be. I’m not a practising Catholic, but I had the awareness we had to get that stuff right. Edward agreed and we followed through with a religious advisor. It’s a bit like if you do films about the army, they are punctilious about how they wear their uniforms. As an actor, I want the cardinals to look at the film [and] they may not like the subject, theme, but at least we can hold our prayer hands correctly, make the sign of the cross correctly, speak Latin correctly. That stuff is very important to me.
Did having family in the priesthood influence your performance in any way?
Fiennes: I wasn’t attempting to portray anyone I knew. I just went back to childhood — Catholic school in Ireland. My mother was a Catholic who had a bumpy moment with the church but never lost a sense of faith. She went on a pilgrimage through France after she was diagnosed with cancer, when she was in remission, and wrote a book. And the memory of her writing about what it was to have faith, what is God — all that stuff came into focus once I was committed to playing Lawrence. Like we do if we ever are in any kind of therapy and have to talk about childhood, it’s amazing what stuff we think we’ve forgotten, that suddenly, in a particular context, it unpacks quite vividly.
Edward, you had Peter Straughan on set with you the whole time. Was that the first time you’d done that? And Ralph, is that something you think is a good idea going forward for you — to have the writer present?
Berger: For me it was the first time. He was always next to me, at least when we had dialogue scenes. When we only had visuals, he slept in, the lazy bastard. But for the dialogue, he came, and without fail I would turn to him and say, “Is this good enough? Do you have any other ideas? What can we do better?” It’s invaluable. Especially in this case, because he had lived with the script for so long, he had imagined those words. Sometimes he would say, “I think it was great, but this one line, I always thought he could bring this kind of feeling into it.” And I thought, “Oh, great. Let me put this to Ralph.” Then I went to Ralph and said, “What do you think if…?”
Fiennes: I could always tell when it was a Peter thing.
Berger: Ha! I sold it as mine but Ralph saw through me. Every time I went to Ralph with Peter’s things, Ralph said, “That’s great, thank you.” Then did it. Probably in 20 instances, Peter’s presence made the movie better.
Fiennes: Peter is also an incredibly calm and wise presence. I have been on a film where two writers were present, and I could feel all their notes through the director. It depends on the writer. Another film I did years ago, the director liked to be free with the dialogue and the writer got upset. I remember doing Schindler’s List, which is a beautiful screenplay by Steven Zaillian, and Steven Spielberg could feel when the words became stale in the mouth of the actor and lost their spontaneity, and he would say, “Just change it. Do it slightly different. Change the word order.” That was always helpful. But I followed this script. I love the writing.
Berger: The script was precise. It’s like a chess game. It’s not an improvisational-dialogue script. If you don’t like the dialogue, don’t make the movie, because it’s driven by dialogue.
Fiennes: The dialogue felt incredibly natural. It came into the mouth with wonderful ease. The dialogue just felt human.
No comments yet