bulgerpaul

You know, I thought the political parallels were so apparent that I didn't see any point in writing a brief paragraph about this movie, for fear of being dubbed Captain Obvious, but then I came across a hilarious review in a publication called Angelus News entitled "Anti Catholic Bias Aside, Conclave is just plain bad," a review that seems to think this movie is actually meant to be about the modern day catholic church, and not simply using the Vatican and its bizarre rituals as a microcosm to illustrate how political games are played globally, and then I thought maybe the analogy wasn't made obvious enough?

I thought the point was obvious. Half of Conclave is a well paced political thriller driven by gossip and blackmail, all of which is a framing device for the moments that take place in between for the other half of the movie, which consists of characters engaging in the gritty, morally grey, ethically ambiguous world of politics, one which separates the optimistic view that electing political figures should be ideologically driven, a grand clashing of values, from the reality that it's mostly driven by men attempting to weaponize the fickle vibe-based voting of other men to their advantage, all the while the left-leaning factions tirelessly strategize in an attempt to prevent the absolute worst outcomes possible, learning how to compromise between the perfect, the good, and the least bad.

Conclave is very unconcerned with the state of the church, Catholicism, or religion in general, but is more interested in utilizing church politics to host a debate over lesser and greater evils in politics more broadly. And it's done with superb acting and writing.

Given how much I've loved Sean Baker's previous three movies, I'm struggling a bit to understand why, in spite of this being every bit as funny as his previous films, and the one that's getting him recognized within the major award's circuits where his previous works were ignored, this is also the one that's left the most blank impression on me. It gives vague impressions of the same pathos contained within Tangerine and The Florida Project, both of which are films that give you just enough detail buried in some lines of dialogue to have an understanding for the economic and legal struggles their characters were facing, but I still feel like I'm completely missing a connection between the Ani I'm seeing on screen and the Ani that existed before the cameras started rolling, a sense of character I thought was far more present in Tangerine and The Florida Project. So with that I'd be tempted to try and liken to this with Red Rocket, which deliberately avoids giving you anything human to grab onto at all with its main character, Mikey Saber, a character who weaponized his extraordinary charisma as a means to sociopathically exploit every relationship in his life, was the entire point, as every emotion he could ever communicate were hollow expressions in service of his vanity, so there's very little I can make of the odd lack of much human desire/ambition about Ani. There are tiny little flashes of something human in this character, but I can't say I can identify any emotional core or something aspirational. Obviously every single one of these movies has a character in desperate need for money, and money is the driving catalyst for the characters in all three films, but in addition to money, Tangerine has a friendship to preserve, The Florida Project has a child that needs to be fed fed, and in Red Rocket, there is a massive ego to satiate, but I can't identify what that driving force in Anora is outside of the money. Sure money is an excellent motivator for a character living in a city like New York, but there needs to be some kind of emotional core that money can address in order to give the journey a satisfying conclusion, and I'm having such a difficult time identifying what that emotional core could possibly be.

I do find that bit of romantic tension between Igor and Ani at the very end of the film to be funny and emotionally compelling, but did Ani express any desire for love, or indicate a lack of non-superficial human connection in her life before Ivan shows up? If there had been any indication at all for such a thing, then I would have found the ending a great deal more fulfilling. The material that's here is incredibly funny, and the performances are fantastic, there's just one piece missing that renders the entire experience emotionally hollow.

The most positive thing I can say for this movie over Terrifier 2 is that Damien Leone really took the criticisms of the excessive length to heart by cutting a good 20 miniutes from the running time. Now if he can hack off an additional 20 minutes in the next film he'll have the perfect runntime, because this is still much longer than it needs to be.

As for the legion of critics telling people not to expect much by way of storytelling or acting, what aspect of the storytelling do you take issue with here, exactly? Both Terrifier 2 and 3 demonstrate a far stronger grasp on very basic elements of setup and payoff better than some of the most venerated horror classics in cinema, even better than the likes of say, Halloween. I mean come on, the opening scene where the future victim nameless mom lectures the future victim nameless dad about locking the doors at night for their own safety, leading to a deliciously ironic moment in which the locked front door ends up becoming the one barrier between herself and escaping Art. Or at the very end when Gabbie outsmarts Art and Victoria by tricking them into allowing Sienna into opening her Christmas gift through two other cleverly disguised setups earlier on in the movie. This movie is chock full of little moments that make its gleefully excessive gore so much more satisfying. Then there's also Leone's deft control of tone, as he's capable of switching between joyful carnage and hopeless horror often within the same scene without feeling jarring or out-of-place. Or the hilariously sacreligious antics with Victoria shoving the Christ-like crown of thorns onto the "savior" of the movie's heads, and Art later whipping her with the entrails of another victim nailed to the wall in a crucifix shape, a whipping staged to look like the flogging of Christ, a truly perverse bit of blasphemy. What part of the storytelling has been neglected here? Because to me it seems like Leone understands precisely how to manage a satisfying kill sequence, his only problem is that the lengths of his movies doesn't justify the amount of material he stretches across them, and as soon as he learns how to tighten down his runntimes appropriately he'll have constructed his evergreen horror masterpiece.