Stand Up for Better Oscar Bait: On Edward Berger’s Conclave

The mother of all costume dramas. Conclave starts with a simple, can’t-miss premise. We will stick ourselves in the Vatican for two hours. What we have to spend on the elaborate set will be offset for by never having to change locations. We will be surrounded by absolutely fabulous art, by marble columns reaching up high over the top of the frame, by the sea of cardinal red. If we don’t have much in the way of sex or violence, the dopamine receptors in our brain will be lit up by cardinals, and here the film’s producers are really onto something.