The twist at the end of ‘Conclave‘ is a shock, but is it necessary?
Edward Berger’s papal thriller Conclave has earned rave reviews since its 2024 premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. Based on Robert Harris’s novel of the same name, the story unfolds in the Vatican following the Pope’s death, as the College of Cardinals gathers to elect his successor. The film has been lauded for its script, which masterfully balances solemn ritual with pulse-pounding intrigue, as well as its stellar cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and Isabella Rossellini.
The film delves into the seductive nature of power and the struggle between tradition and evolution. Underlying it all is an unspoken debate about gender. As the cardinals go about their pomp and circumstance, debating how they believe the Catholic church position itself in the future, nuns quietly cook and clean for them. Inevitably, this clear visual distinction raises questions. What does it mean to have such a powerful global organisation that still subordinates women in the 21st century? And more importantly, why must there be such a harsh delineation between sexes at all?
This question is brought to the fore with explicit power when the cardinals finally choose a new pope. Archbishop Benítez is a dark horse. When he shows up at the Vatican, no one knows who he is. They soon discover that he is from Mexico, and that the late Pope appointed him in pectore (in secret) to preside over the church in Kabul. He is a quiet presence, rarely adding his voice to the proceedings until one pivotal scene when he denounces the conservative wing of the conclave for stoking violence. As a result, he wins the vote and becomes the next Pope.
The twist arrives when Cardinal Lawrence finally solves an outlying mystery – why Benítez cancelled a surgical operation in Switzerland. He learns that the new Pope was supposed to undergo a laparoscopic hysterectomy to remove his uterus and ovaries. As Benítez explains, he never knew that he had female sex organs until an appendectomy in his thirties. In the end, he decided that it would be a greater sin to tamper with God’s handiwork than to accept how he’d been made. With extreme difficulty, Lawrence processes the information and agrees to keep it secret. In the final scene of the film, he opens a window in his stuffy room and looks outside, where three nuns are walking through the courtyard.
The best twist endings are the ones that feel surprising but inevitable. Conclave nails the surprise but not only fails to make it feel unavoidable but also fails to make it feel pertinent. It is hardly thought-provoking that a person who has always identified as a man and has had no doubts about his gender identity should discover in adulthood that he has female sex organs only detectable through a medical procedure. Gender power dynamics exist because we enforce them based on how a person presents, and if Benítez has always presented as male, he has and always will have the power granted to men.
For anyone who believes strongly that gender is a strict binary based solely on anatomy, the twist might be provocative, but it’s more likely to spark the usual tantrum about wokeness than sober reflection. Even within the world of the film, it is unlikely to have much of an effect. Cardinal Lawrence has promised to keep it a secret, and he himself probably won’t be significantly affected in the long run. He has already proclaimed the importance of doubt within faith, and though it may lead him to question his beliefs all over again, that was already a foundational part of his religious practice.
As a commentary on gender and sex, the revelation about Benítez is much less thought-provoking than the powerfully quiet role that the nuns play. The movie returns to the pull between tradition and progression within the church many times and to the contrast between the roles of the nuns and the clergy more specifically. Surely, that should be the crux of the ending, the open question on which each viewer can ponder long after the credits roll.
In the most obvious demonstration of the twist’s redundancy, it is. When Lawrence cracks open his window to finally let in the literal and figurative fresh air and sees the nuns, it brings that question back and forth again. The women have always been there, across the courtyard, in the kitchen, folding pillowcases and sometimes bearing the clergy’s children. You could skip the scene about the new Pope’s cancelled surgery and lose nothing. You might even have a little more headspace to contemplate it.
Like all great movies, Conclave is up to individual interpretation. It’s a meditation on power, greed, faith, cowardice, and gender. In none of these areas, however, is the revelation about Benítez any more provocative or relevant than the revelations about the indiscretions of the other cardinals and the role of women in the church. The ending doesn’t ruin the film, but it throws an unnecessarily flashy plot point into a movie that thrives on subtlety.
