Edward Berger’s Conclave feels like a throwback to two distinct 90s modes: the mid-budget adult thriller and the corporate Vatican thriller. It’s about a papal conclave – the process by which cardinals from all over the world gather at the Vatican to elect a new Pope. This can be particularly fraught when the Pope dies unexpectedly, as occurs here. As head of the conclave, Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) has to make sure it all runs smoothly, and contend with his fiery colleagues, most notably Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) and Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow). Add Isabella Rossellini into the mix as Sister Agnes, the cardinals’ housekeeper, and you have a film that’s filled to the brim with scene-chewing actors. Indeed, so actorly is Conclave that it often takes on a comic edge, which works nicely for a narrative that is so focused on the performances and machinations that comprise Vatican power. Fiennes, in particular, always works best in slightly hammy roles, and his homiletic manner works brilliantly among the gossipy, cliquey, cloistered and hushed plot points featured here.

Like the mid-budget 90s thriller, and the corporate Vatican thriller in particular, Conclave is fixated on information – it is an information thriller. The Vatican is used as a cipher for a new networked world order, even as it is perpetually presented by Berger as a place of darkness and obscurity, especially the Sistine Chapel, cast in gloomy shadow. This focus on information takes several forms and starts with the final days and private decisions of the old Pope. Cardinal Lawrence tries to make sense of the old Pope’s final meeting with Cardinal Tremblay, and is astonished when a hitherto unknown Cardinal, assigned to Kabul, turns up as part of the conclave. Cardinal Benitez, played by Carlos Diehz, was appointed by the old Pope “in pectore,” which means that he was given his position under strict secrecy, presumably because of the dangers of appointing a Catholic position in the heart of the Taliban regime. Along with this focus on the secret meetings and appointments of the old Pope, Peter Straughan’s screenplay revolves around several pieces of anomalous information and blocked communication. Cardinal Lawrence is experiencing a blockage in his own communication with God, in the form of a crisis in prayer, while the sanctity of the confessional, and the slippery threshold between confessional and everyday speech, pervades virtually every conversation.

However, the key ingredient in this elevation of information is the most important protocol around the conclave itself: absolute sequestration. Upon arriving at the Vatican, the cardinals have to go through a security gate, reliquish all mobile devices and agree to have the landlines removed from their rooms. Moreover, Cardinal Lawrence has all the windows covered just in case outsiders will be able to discern what the conclave are saying from the vibrations of the glass. All the ritual objects around the voting procedure become synecdoches for the opacity of informational power, as does the tactile hush of the film itself, the smoothness with which one procedure gives way to the next – or one vote gives way to the next, since the cardinals simply cast their ballots repeatedly until a majority is achieved.

As the film proceeds, this information sequestration expands in two distinct directions. It expands outwards as Rome is rocked by a series of terrorist attacks, several of which actually shudder the walls of the Vatican and shatter its windows, even as the Cardinals are not permitted to consult any news media to contextualise the violence. Meanwhile, the sequestration extends inwards to the seal on the door of the old Pope’s bedroom, which Cardinal Lawrence finally breaks in an effort to discern the truth. This he finds concealed beyond a further threshold, a secret compartment at the head of the old Pope’s bed. In one of the most memorable moments of the film, Sister Agnes arrives at the door, and notices the broken seal precisely when Cardinal Lawrence is about to make his exit. As the two pause on either side of the door, Berger floods the film with the prescient hypersilence of the informational thriller, the moment when data hovers on the fringe of visibility and tactility. This same textured silence also suffuses the one moment when Cardinal Lawrence breaks the external sequestration – appropriately, given the film’s 90s pedigree, when Sister Agnes pointedly leaves him alone with a desktop computer that contains some salient information.

These informational aporia and epiphanies allow Conclave to chart a remarkably evocative series of fissures between faith and doubt, conservatism and liberalism, and rationalism and fanaticism, all of which play as a microcosm of world politics. There’s a particularly strong analogy to the arcane and ritualistic energies infusing the current American election – Bellini fears becoming the “Richard Nixon of Popes,” Lawrence confronts Bellini about his allegiance to Tremblay by asking “What has he offered you, Secretary of State?” and the reigning fear underpinning the whole procedure is embodied in Lawrence’s question: “Is this what we’re reduced to, the least worst option?” The slide towards the extreme right is as evident in the Vatican in America, as a cadre of traditionalists bemoan that there hasn’t been an Italian Pope in more than forty years, and promise to reverse the last sixty years of Vatican progressivism and return to Latin services. Yet the complexity and performativity of identity politics also plays a role here, as the conservatives put their weight behind the first African Pope in history, while conveniently ignoring the fact that he believes in criminal penalties for homosexuality.

No wonder then that Lawrence believes that the greatest danger facing the Church, in this era of rampant informationalism, is certainty: “Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts.” Implicit in his prayer is the film’s own suggestion that the certainties of the information age have fueled the rise in right-wing extremism. Concomitantly, Berger recommends a return to the more informationally murky mid-90s as a way of advocating a more cautious, hesitant and speculative middle way. The twist beautifully encapsulates this approach to knowledge too. After being elected to Pope on the back of a rousing speech against factionalism, Cardinal Benitez reveals to Cardinal Lawrence that he is in fact intersex: “I know what it is to exist between the world’s certainties.” From this point on, the Papal body will stand for indeterminacy rather than informational assurances, doubt as a way of being.