Three Movies About Faith

Conclave, Heretic, Bonhoeffer

I thought it was interesting that the film industry simultaneously served up three movies about the Christian faith in theater so I went to see all of them. Here are my short reviews of Conclave, Heretic, and Bonhoeffer.

Conclave

First off: If you want a much more substantial review of Conclave that will add to your understanding of the Roman Catholic church, then I refer you to my friend, David Armstrong, and his excellent Substack review.

While I mostly am the guy who facilitates group outings to the movies, I’ve always enjoyed going to the theater by myself. It is a calming and introspective experience and sometimes it’s nice to witness a piece of art and enjoy the after effects without anyone else’s reactions as part of the mix. This was the case for my experience of Conclave, a film directed by Edward Berger (whose most important directorial works for me are his three episodes of season one of The Terror, one of my favorite TV shows ever), written for the screen by Peter Straughan (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), and based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris about whom I know nothing.

It seems a lot of christians, and especially Roman Catholics, have taken umbrage at Conclave but I’ve got to say I just loved this movie. Maybe my bar is too low for expectations of Hollywood’s portrayal of the faith and maybe I would feel differently if I was RC but I enjoyed every moment of this film and might even say I found it to be spiritually edifying. I have mostly noted a distasteful sense of defensiveness and lack of generosity on the part of the christian audiences of Conclave (not counting David’s review referred to above) so I feel the duty to come to the movie’s defense. Full disclosure: it was just me and three elderly folk in the theater and there were no cell phones or talkers or crinkling plastic wrappers so my elation may be unrelated to the film itself; etiquette is so often lacking these days that one feels a little high when one encounters it.

Conclave is about a Roman Catholic cardinal, Cardinal Lawrence, portrayed by the always captivating Ralph Fiennes, who is called upon to preside over a papal conclave in the wake of the late pope’s death. There are many complications that arise over the few days in which the cardinals discuss and pray for discernment and jockey for votes and generally try to influence the future of the RC church in ways that range from good to bad faith. I don’t want to give much of the plot away so here I will simply offer a few impressions.

How delightful to watch an artful movie, intellectually stimulating, made for adults and yet rated PG, serious (the funniest moments were when John Lithgow tried to speak Latin and when a nun called a cardinal out for his sins), and utterly thrilling even though “a bunch of catholic guys talk, mostly in whispers, about who the next pope should be,” is a fairly accurate synopsis of it. I was quickly struck by a sense of gratefulness while sitting in the theater; the mind does not want to be merely entertained but elevated and it feels like a sated thirst whenever an artist guides you up and in. Conclave is very beautiful; the score (Volker Bertelmann) and cinematography (Stéphane Fontaine, who shot one of my favorite movies, Captain Fantastic) were elegant and masterful; the performances were an interplay of seasoned veteran actors.

Oh the energy, sweat, and tears that the Church's servants expend on her behalf. Saint Paul speaks well when he speaks as a midwife or even as a woman in labor to describe his travails in seeing the church achieve her ends. Conclave hit quite close to home for me as an elder and shepherd in my own local church. We are a ragtag bunch; we have no grand buildings, we are not part of an institution that spans millennia (other than the great chain of preachers of the Glad Tidings through whom the story and ways have been passed down to us), we have no vestments other than our Colorado casual attire; yet I felt such solidarity with these Cardinals and nuns and others whom Conclave showed laboring to steward the church.

How moving to witness the labors of those who are throwing their life away for the sake of Christ in his Church. There are many times when I am sitting with the other elders of our church or when I am with our larger leader gathering and I marvel at the absurd liberality with which each person is pouring out their life for the sake of the people they shepherd; for the goal of seeing Christ revealed in the body that is coming into being and that we are all members of.

How we hope we are in step with the Spirit! Are we making the right decisions? Are we shepherding the flock faithfully? Are we utterly missing the mark? How can we best steward the resources God has entrusted to us? Is each person being seen and loved and aided? Are we giving our children and youth everything they need? Are we making disciples? When we say "it seemed right with the Holy Spirit and with us," what's the ratio of that mix? The list of existential questions that the church leader daily asks goes on and on. So watching a beautiful movie about church leaders making a big decision moved me deeply

I don't know how a church leader who is well acquainted with their own sinfulness and divided internal life can get too offended by Conclave. Maybe some of us are blissfully ignorant of moral failures in the Church. There is a scene in the movie where a group of cardinals are sitting in an auditorium, the lighting and blocking presents them like a fine art painting that you would find in a museum, perhaps one by Caravaggio or Edward Hopper. They each debate what should be done to ensure the wrong people (as they see it) are not elected and that their favorite candidates have the greatest chance of being elected. Isn't this just a picture of the interior life of each person? Aren't we each subject to numerous petty instincts and fears and a sense of powerlessness that leads us to play power games and ingrained patterns of relating we were taught as children and a fractured self that places us in each seat of the conclave? I think those offended do protest too much. And yet Christ is revealed in and works through us, heals us, and is bringing us, as a single human, to “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” Somehow, healthy leadership and community can often still be found.

Major Spoilers in this Paragraph - Skip to the next paragraph if you'd like to avoid these.
My one criticism of Conclave is that some of the symbolism was a bit heavy handed and the plot twist at the end of the movie felt slightly contrived. And yet, after forgiving this, I've realized that the surprise that the person elected for the role of the next pope is intersex is almost the inevitable conclusion of the story and I can empathize with the writer’s decision. The new pope presents as a man and looks like a man from the outside but also has some internal female organs. It seems like a lot of people are interpreting the decision to include this in the story as "woke" but I don't think that's quite right and is probably based on a lack of familiarity with the difference between trans and intersex identities. This monkey wrench of a plot development might be the most brilliant way the movie could have concluded. The worst sin a filmmaker can commit in my book is to preach at their audience. Thankfully, Berger does not do this. The presentation feels like more of a thought exercise you would find in an ethics class. What if the next pope was intersex? Now discuss.

End of spoilers.

I hope you watch the movie and I hope you take it seriously. Rather than dismissing it because some of the characters reflect poorly upon Christianity or because you think it is woke or that it otherwise offends your political sensibilities, I think many of us would be better off for having engaged in the conversations and thought exercises Conclave invites us to consider.

Heretic

Heretic is written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the duo who brought us the Quiet Place trilogy. It is a horror movie about two Mormon girls who try to evangelize the wrong man while performing their missionary duties. Really, the movie is just one long debate about faith and nihilism. You might even think of Heretic as simply being a socratic dialogue.

Heretic asks many of the classic questions that challenge the faithful: Are you sure your faith is the right one? Do you just believe what you do because your parents did? Aren't all religions just invented systems of social control?

Despite the unusual and extreme circumstances of the movie's plot, I found the core conversation of the movie to be quite familiar. It reminded me of my apologetics phase as a teenager and of the internal debates I've had about the merits of my way of life as a follower of The Way. In a highly qualified sense given the crimes of the villain, I could say that all three of the characters in this film are in my own head at times.

I want to give away as little as possible about Heretic so as to avoid robbing you of the feeling of anxiety and dread that you are probably hoping for if you see the movie (which, btw, I am not advising you do; I'll leave that to your own discernment). I have a whole theory of horror movies many of my friends have heard me convey from my soapbox and at some point I will write about it but for now, I'll just say I think Heretic is an important movie and one of some artistic depth.

I came out of the theater with a deep sense of heaviness. While the writers left some ambiguity at the conclusion of the core debate of Heretic, I think the answer they give is probably a sad one though not without beauty. Nonetheless, I could see Heretic influencing one person in losing their faith while having the opposite effect on another.

As a movie, Heretic is just fantastic. Directing, filming, acting, score are all done with mastery. Most of all, I found the pacing to be just about perfect.

Bonhoeffer

Yes, that is a gun in his hand…

While Heretic is intentionally designed to make people of faith squirm in their seats, between the two, Bonhoeffer is the movie most likely to make me abandon my faith if that were on the table. While the makers of Bonhoeffer certainly do great violence to the legacy of the beloved modern saint, their greatest sins (one might say crimes) are artistic. Here, I'm going to be at least as offended as those who got upset about Conclave were, so joke's on me.

I don't want to go on about how bad Bonhoeffer is as a movie–it's cloying performances, it's affected score, the fact that not one character felt like a real person, the 90s TV camera work, the cheesy-as-hell script–so I will only mention how boring the movie was. In fact, my favorite moment in this moviegoing experience was the scene where Dietrich was in seminary and his professor was droning on about some aspect of theology in the most soul crushingly dull way (think Bueller). There were several shots of the students looking tormented with boredom. This was the most emotional resonance I think the movie ever achieved for me. I leaned over and told my friend that I felt the way those students did. She nodded because she was thinking exactly the same thing. When, after the class, one of the students bemoaned of their teacher, "How could someone subject others to such torture?" I actually burst out laughing at the irony.

As an homage to the man and a faithful telling of his story, Bonhoeffer is almost completely trash. To call BS one need go no further than the movie’s subtitle: "Pastor. Spy. Assassin." Bonhoeffer, while a real man who faced challenging ethical conundrums and made nuanced decisions, was, I believe, ultimately faithful to his ethic of nonviolence and was not an assassin.

The darkest scene of the movie was not Bonhoeffer's execution but the scene where he and two other men, one of whom was planning to murder Hitler (and who knows what innocent bystanders) as a suicide bomber, pray together. Bonhoeffer prays that God would bless them in their endeavor and expresses how certain he is that they are doing what God wants. This is such an evil scene, such an insult to the real man, and such an insidious piece of propaganda designed to shape the viewer’s loves, that I feel the need to forgive the filmmakers for creating it. It is also historically inaccurate since Bonhoeffer was not involved in the plot to kill Hitler. Bonhoeffer was indeed a spy but his only aims, it seems, were to save Jews from capture and to build a church network to support God's people in wartime.

The postscript during the credits is where the filmmakers present their motivation for making the movie. They give a sort of PSA that says something like, “The Holocaust happened. Now, in our time, antisemitism is on the rise. Let’s make sure the Holocaust never happens again.” While it is indeed evil that hate against Jews does seem to be on rise, I have the impression that the film’s rhetoric is aimed more at securing sympathies toward the Israeli genocide in Gaza than it is about teaching us not to be antisemites. What is the ultimate rhetorical aim of this film? My interpretation is this: to reappropriate Bonhoeffer’s famous dictum, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” such that, rather than being the call to death to self in the pursuit of discipleship that they are, Bonhoeffer’s words become a call for christians to support, condone, and perhaps engage in physical warfare and violence in their pursuit of the good.

I hope you read Bonhoeffer's works and engage with his legacy. If you want a good biography of the man you won't find it in this film and you won't find it in the work of Eric Metaxas either (sorry guys, DB was not an American evangelical).

Three alternative suggestions:

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography by Eberhard Bethge

• Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Charles Marsh

• Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906-1945: Martyr, Thinker, Man of Resistance by Ferdinand Schlingensiepen

I’ve been a bit of a grump here, so let me say two positive things about my experience of this film:

1. The story of how Bonhoeffer continued to be a pastor and evangelist in prison is so moving and beautiful, not even the makers of this film could ruin it.

2. I watch Bonhoeffer with maybe 15 other people from my church. Afterwards, we all sat in a big circle and discussed the movie, its messaging, and the real story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer such as we understood it. This was a lovely experience and one I would recommend. Rather than each person being subject to propaganda in isolation, we got to inform each other and ask questions and engage as a community of disciples and pray for each other.

Finally, consider that if Bonhoeffer was killed because of his supposed attempt to assassinate Hitler, then he is neither a saint nor a martyr, he is simply a soldier. To retell his story in this way is a crime against the Church as it aims to rob her of one of her modern saints and martyrs in an age where she needs more examples of faithful, Christlike leadership.

Conclusion

Two outta three ain’t bad. I hope there are more movies like Conclave and Heretic in 2025! I also hope Christians stop making and supporting atrocities like Bonhoeffer.