Edward Berger is a German director who made several films in his homeland that enjoyed moderate success, but he gained most of his fame on television. He directed the British series “Patrick Melrose” and then the first three episodes of the American remake of the series “His Honor.” But in 2022 he created the monumental war film “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which simply amazed me. It was my film of the year, and not only was I impressed the film won four Oscars. Out of nowhere, a wonderful masterpiece fell into my hands from a director I had never known.
Berger, who studied cinema at New York University, suddenly became the most sought-after director in the world at age 54. His name appears alongside at least five new films in various stages of production from an adaptation of a Lawrence Osborne book currently filming with Tilda Swinton and Colin Farrell to a reboot of the Jason Bourne film series. Now comes his new film, his first after his Oscar for “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Until White Smoke Appears,” and it is impossible not to admire his talent. It is an excellent film.
The film is based on a book by Robert Harris (two of his previous books, “The Ghost Writer” and “An Officer and a Spy,” were adapted into films by Roman Polanski) and adapted for the screenplay by Peter Straughan, who wrote the American version of the Israeli film “The Debt” and adapted John le Carré’s “The Little Drummer Girl” into a film with Gary Oldman. Straughan already won a Golden Globe for this script and may also win an Oscar.
In “Until White Smoke Appears,” Berger proves that it is not the story that matters but how it is told. Take this same script and story and you could imagine it directed a thousand different ways, banal and ordinary. For example, as a television film presenting the plot as a procedural drama with bureaucratic precision. But Berger proves to be a director with grandeur and charisma. It is a film whose plot takes place largely in the Sistine Chapel designed and painted by Michelangelo, and it seems Berger wanted to create a film inspired by Renaissance Italian art and architecture.
The film’s plot is trapped in closed rooms and focuses on intrigues and conversations, but Berger together with French cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine creates drama in images and movements, emphasized by music and geometry. It is a film about rituals and protocols, designed with solemnity and grand formalism. And this creates the wondrous enjoyment of the film, because its plot concerns the process of selecting a new pope, a ceremonial event that one would expect to interest mostly a Catholic audience, but Berger turns it into a political thriller, transforming a particular event into a universal example.
Strangely, the Hebrew concept “Until White Smoke Appears,” mentioned in the media whenever a feverish negotiation requires parties to remain secluded overnight until a decision, comes from the process of choosing a pope. In each round of voting where no pope is elected with a two-thirds majority of the voting cardinals, the ballots are burned, and the black smoke coming from the chimney above St. Peter’s Square signals to the crowd that no pope has been chosen yet.
When a pope is finally elected, the ballots are burned with a substance producing white smoke, and the crowds cheer. All this occurs in a process called a conclave which is the original title of the film and the book. The conclave is a gathering of cardinals from around the world who present themselves as possible candidates to succeed the pope and also act as the voting body. They are all in seclusion, no one enters or leaves the Vatican campus, and in the Sistine Chapel (a replica built at studios in Rome for filming), at the foot of the Creation of Adam painting, the voting process takes place.
Ralph Fiennes, in a remarkable performance, plays the dean of the cardinals in charge of the conclave and overseeing the procedure. He seems to be the only one among his fellow cardinals who reacts emotionally and faithfully to the situation he is in, rather than seeing the election process only as a political opportunity. In two to three scenes, Berger presents the intense situation the pope has died in his sleep, and the cardinals closest to him gather around his bed.
The dean of the cardinals, his loyal secretary; the rival, shady and secretive figure; and the political rival. Also present are senior figures from Nigeria, Italy, and Kabul. Each has their political and religious agenda, with the opportunity to be elected as the next pope and advance the Catholic Church toward progress and reform, or regress it toward medieval conservatism. In the background, a figure who begins as a passive observer gradually becomes significant and dominant as the film progresses.
A few years ago, Nanni Moretti directed a film called “We Have a Pope,” which was not very good but turned the same event the papal conclave into a psychological sitcom about the elected pope suffering a panic attack and needing psychological treatment. A few years later came the film “The Two Popes” (2019), which tells (paraphrasing an event from 2012) of Pope Benedict’s resignation, convincing Pope Francis (the current pope) to succeed him. And now again, a film in the Vatican, the smallest country in the world, this time as a political thriller. It is probably no coincidence that “Until White Smoke Appears” was produced and released in an election year in America.
It is a film showing the democratic process requiring a candidate to be elected by a two-thirds majority, and how with each round of voting, political alliances are created and broken, how candidates drop out of the ballot and transfer their loyalty to those who were moments ago their competitors, just to prevent another candidate from winning. The film asks who among the candidates is there to advance values and who is there to advance themselves, their status, and their desire to become one of the most powerful and famous people in the world. Since Spielberg and Kushner’s “Lincoln,” there has not been a film dealing with the democratic process as a series of negotiations, compromises, and exchanges.
Within all this are mysteries that Fiennes’ character must solve a mysterious cardinal, secretly anointed by the late pope, who suspected a conspiracy in the Vatican that he did not have time to uncover. “Until White Smoke Appears,” though it does not hesitate to touch theology and the foundations of faith, uses the conservative institution of the Catholic Church to show how it also must deal with contemporary issues attitudes toward women, racism and discrimination, sexual assault, gender and self-definition, and the ongoing battle between liberal forces and reactionary positions. As such, it is a political allegory based on a wish that the Vatican perhaps through divine intervention will align with contemporary universal values. It is a sweet optimistic fantasy but built as a thriller that is simply excellently made.