'Conclave' | Anatomy of a scene

“Hello, my name is Edward Berger and I am the director of the film “Conclave”. So the film has only been running for about half-hour. We set the place up because the Vatican and the Pope died. And now Cardinal Lawrence, Ralph Fiennes' character, is dean of the College of Cardinals, which suggests he has to arrange the upcoming election of the brand new pope. And now it's his big day since it's the primary day of the conclave, which suggests all doors are closed. The cardinals go to the Sistine Chapel to vote for this next pope. And Ralph Fiennes gives the introductory speech, a sermon. And we selected this piece of music right from the beginning. It is definitely the one music that will not be composed. Everything else consists within the film. So it’s the only style of original music sung by a choir. And it’s the only piece of music that has been played within the Sistine Chapel for a whole bunch of years. And I discovered this fact on a morning tour at 6:00 am. We visited the Sistine Chapel as a part of a tour and it was empty. It's the one time it's empty. If you go at 6:00 within the morning and the tour guide tells us that that is the music piece. So I looked it up and located it and located it incredibly moving and exquisite. So I made a decision to incorporate it within the film. So Ralph starts the speech in Italian, and Ralph had been practicing Italian for a very long time and was actually very, very persistent. We at all times had a dialogue coach or someone like an Italian there who would hearken to his diction and the whole lot. She was very comfortable with the way in which he performed it because he also took great care to make it feel believable that he had lived there for 25 years and had been practicing Italian for 25 years. That's why we paid a whole lot of attention to it. But in some unspecified time in the future something comes over him, a sense. And he stops. And then he switches to his natural language, which is English. “But you know all that.” “Let me speak from the heart for a moment.” And gives a speech about his true feelings, and people are doubts. He expresses his doubts about his own faith, about his own purpose within the church, in regards to the church typically, about what he thinks the subsequent pope ought to be, someone who accepts doubt and offers in to it. And this intuitive language, this giving in, causes many individuals to frown. You'll notice that on this scene, to start with, when he's speaking Italian, we're often pretty far faraway from Ralph. We are from behind. We come from a profile. And as soon as he speaks from the center, as soon as his language changes, we do a close-up, a full frontal central close-up, and the camera starts moving. And then it's actually only one shot. “Certainty is the great enemy of unity.” “Certainty is the mortal enemy of tolerance.” It's only a single shot, a continuous little push at Ralph as he speaks, and he loses himself in his words, not noticing anyone around him . And only when he's finished. We cut to the back of a large shot of all of the cardinals listening. “If there were only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith.” “Let us pray that God would give us a pope who doubts.” The scene makes Ralph Fiennes a personality to be with must calculate. He gives the speech that comes from his heart, and other cardinals, especially those with ambitions of becoming the subsequent pope, suddenly fear that a brand new contender is within the room. And that’s the climax of the scene.

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