Rick McGinnis: Popes on the Big Screen

Rick McGinnis on the incredibly tiny subgenre — the “conclave” film:

Quinn’s Pope knows that he will have to confront a world prepared to solve geopolitical problems with nuclear solutions; Piccoli’s Melville only seems to struggle with his inadequacy to the task at hand, while viewers are supposed to intuit what awaits him outside the locked door of the conclave and the balcony overlooking the thronged square; the same doctrinal feuds, fiscal and bureaucratic corruption, sexual scandals and hostility from the increasingly militant – both secular and Islamic – that were waiting for the newly-elected Francis behind the cheering crowds this month.