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Edward Berger, director of Conclave






Focus Features releases Conclave on October 25th, 2024 in theaters nationwide.




NYC MOVIE GURU: What was the process like to decide what to omit from the novel by Robert Harris?

Edward Berger: The book is always so different from a movie. When you have a movie, you kind of have to liberate yourself from the book. It was mainly Peter [Straughan, the screenwriter], Tessa Ross, the producer, and I sitting together and chipping away at it and distilling it to whatever is the essence of it. It's a step-by-step process where you go, "That's not needed." The main focus was, "How to create a character?" Any scene that wasn't part of Cardinal Thomas Lawrence's eyes and ears, where he wasn't and when we couldn't take the audience into his immediate surroundings and into his understanding of the proceeding, we cut. We basically wanted to make a movie that's purely from his perspective.

NYC MOVIE GURU: In the editing room, which element was most challenging to tweak: entertaining the audience, provoking them emotionally or provoking them intellectually?

EB: I think the entertaining [element]. My natural instinct, especially with a movie like this, is to always be really precise. I wanted it to feel like a chess game. Cardinal Bellini has a chess board at the beginning and that, for me, was, kind of, the movie. That was a sort of Easter Egg. So, I wanted to make a really well-constructed chess game. Sometimes the fun or the emotional elements could fall by the wayside because you're focusing on precision. For us, I think that the last one was entertainment because I always think, "Ok, if it's intellectually interesting, then it's also entertaining." But that's not necessarily true.The first three [music] cues when the movie starts--we added those very late into the movie. That kind of changed the way you are permitted to enter the movie. You kind of go, "Oh, that's the kind of movie this is!" The music signals that to you. It was a very late addition where I kept thinking, "What could that be that draws us in?" and that was that.

NYC MOVIE GURU: Which is most challenging for you: to trust the audience's intelligence, emotions, patience or imagination?

EB: They're all really difficult. You're torn when you edit. I always think that the audience is intelligent. I make one shot and they get it. So, I sometimes err on the side of omitting too much and then other people like my producers or editors slowly need to pull me back. Or my friends who watched the movie said, "I didn't get that!" And I'm like, "How did you not get that shot?" And then I realized that it's not that obvious and I need to add a little bit. But I really trust the audience's intelligence and their imagination. Sometimes I worry about losing their patience and I then try to be faster especially in a movie like this where not much happens. People talk and they sit, so you have to rely on the emotionally of the actors so that the audience side with that. You never know if that really works until you've screened it and found the right pace of when to cut and how long to hold a shot. It was a big challenge to get that right. Sometimes, I restrain myself from too much emotion. I just don't like when I'm told how to feel. I don't like strings during a tear-jerking scene; I want that to be silent so that you can feel it yourself. I want to give you space to feel that. To get that level right is always difficult.

NYC MOVIE GURU: How would you define the term "cinematic"?

EB: Cinematic is when you can take the audience and give them an emotional experience. That could take place in one room or in a city or a space station. It doesn't really matter. When I can understand an emotional character arc and feel that I'm in that person's world and shoes. When I'm basically transported to a different time, a different set and a different character, that, for me, is cinematic. Usually, I feel that I've had a great cinematic experience when I lose all sense of time in the movie---especially in slow movies. Suddenly, I go, "This is going to be a good filmmaker." Paweł Pawlikowski is a great example. He has a first shot in a movie like Cold War or Ida and you realize, "Oh, this one is going to be different. So, I'm going to settle down and adapt to the filmmaker's pace and to his or her world." That, for me, is cinematic: when I get transported into a different perception of time. Conclave is not a fast-paced movie. It's not a movie where a lot happens. We tried to make it very deliberate and precise and take you into a world that you don't know much about, but still make it an emotional experience because you live it through Cardinal Thomas Lawrence's eyes and ears.

NYC MOVIE GURU: Would it be accurate to say that Cardinal Thomas Lawrence is the most introspective? As a filmmaker, how do you capture introspection?

EB: Definitely Cardinal Thomas Lawrence. He's English, who are generally more diplomatic, nice and withdrawn. They keep their thoughts and emotions to themselves. Secondly, he's a manager; he's not an Alpha. He's not considered to be the next Pope. He's the person who's reluctantly organizing things from the third row while other people take the limelight and shout louder. While other people say, "Look at me!", he says, "Don't look at me. I want to stay in the dark." He doesn't have too many lines. He listens a lot, and that is what made us choose Ralph Fiennes. Suddenly, I woke up and said, "It's gotta be Ralph." because he's someone who shows us what he thinks behind his eyes. Without doing much, he takes us into his soul and I get to witness what he thinks. That's such a gift. He does it with very minimal means. If you notice it, edit at the right moment on the right sentence to get the right impact---to not always have a close-up, but to edit it on the right line and then also to vary your close-ups. I really like being at a higher close-up to sort of creep into the person's brain or behind to see what they're thinking. I did a lot of those on Cardinal Thomas Lawrence to basically make you feel like you're the ear and just listening and then show the reaction at the right moment. I think that that's the main thing. And then I trust the great gift that someone like Ralph Fiennes has.

NYC MOVIE GURU: Would Conclave work as a play?

EB: I think so. You'd have to adapt it a lot and simplify it. People enter and exit the same room, but I don't know. I'm not a very good theater director. I think that there are people who could definitely turn this into a play. It's an interesting idea. Maybe we should do it.

NYC MOVIE GURU: Would it be fair to say that Conclave is a political film?

EB: For me, it is a political film. We have a lot of fractions in the movie that represent our society and what's going on in society and the different opinions and conflict and Right Wing/Left Wing, gender and race---all of these issues and conflicts are part of the film. To me, the film is much more political than a conspiracy thriller like an Alan Pakula movie from the 70's than anything else. It could take place in Washington, D.C. Whatever Nancy Pelosi did behind closed doors to get Kamala Harris to run was essentially a conclave.

NYC MOVIE GURU: Why did you choose a large yellow font for Conclave's title card?

EB: In Conclave, I like shock elements. First of all, the catholic church is the oldest and most archaic institution. So, I like the idea of crushing that with a title. It's a modern font and bright yellow which is kind of the opposite of red, and it's too big. It overpowers everything. So just to shatter that idea or the perception of what we think of the church with the title card, felt interesting to me just like I put vapes, smokes, cell phones and plastic body bags for dead popes to shatter the idea that we have. For the last shot, I saw on a photo in Rome, three nuns walking down an alley at night dressed in white. Since we deal with the oldest patriarchy in the world, the movie is, essentially, about putting a small crack in it and saying, "What if the future were a little different?" and to have Cardinal Thomas Lawrence look at these women in white laughing, that's a good pointer into the future.

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