What’s the best part about shooting a movie in Rome with Stanley Tucci?
The food, of course. Just ask Ralph Fiennes and director Edward Berger, who teamed with Tucci in the new papal political thriller “Conclave” (in theaters Friday).
“I always enjoy making movies, but the best part might have been this restaurant we all went to toward the end, where Stanley had cooked with the grandfather who owned the place, and it was wonderful,” says Berger (“All Quiet on the Western Front”).
But the real perk came months later, when Berger called the restaurant and asked the owner if there was any way to get a table for himself and his mother.
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“He said, ‘You’re Stanley’s friend? Of course!’” Berger says with a laugh.
Adds Fiennes, “But you have to have Stanley Tucci to make it all go smoothly.”
Will the two appear in “The Heart of Italy,” the gastronomic TV adventure helmed by Tucci, who’s promoting his book “What I Ate in One Year (and Related Thoughts)”?
Fiennes smiles: “Yes, I’m sure that’s next.”
Great food doesn’t just nourish the body, of course, it feeds the soul. And the soul was very much front and center for Fiennes as he filmed “Conclave.”
“My character doesn’t want the job (of being pope) and confesses to a friend that he has a problem with prayer, and that feels like an honest admission,” says Fiennes. “He’s having a crisis of faith, and feels it’s important to have questions, not to be locked into the certitude of dogma. He’s back to the simple fact that there is a mystery to faith.”
Fiennes, 61, is a serious thespian who has won wider acclaim by playing M, the hard-edged boss of James Bond in the Daniel Craig 007 series. He stars as the thoughtful and taciturn Cardinal Lawrence, who as dean of the illustrious College of Cardinals is suddenly thrust into the position of organizing a conclave, the storied vote for a new pope.
At the heart of this Vatican drama are very human vices, namely arrogance and greed, as various factions vie for the ultimate power of the papacy and its oversight of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
Tucci plays Cardinal Bellini, who initially wants his friend Lawrence to become pope, while John Lithgow’s Cardinal Tremblay has his own designs. As in the 2016 Robert Harris book “Conclave,” the stunning vote result is something none of the 200-plus Cardinals expect.
For Fiennes, who describes himself as a lapsed but inquisitive Catholic, the movie stirred up long-standing questions about faith and history. He says he spent a lot of time speaking with priests and cardinals for the role.
“I was brought up Catholic, but at age 13, I protested,” he explains, adding that the church in Ireland, where he lived as a boy, was “very powerful and teaching by priests and nuns was often expedited with a stick.”
But despite moving away from the church at a young age, Fiennes has remained fascinated by the historical figure of Jesus.
“Who was this guy Jesus, who surely preached in a simple robe and sandals in a desert landscape, under the occupation of Rome?” he says. “If I take away all the carapace of the churches and the paintings and you go, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, who was that guy?’ He had a message to help people lead their lives with a sense of purpose. So this Cardinal Lawrence is also asking those kinds of questions.”
That very personal connection to his “Conclave” character makes for some intense close-ups where you can literally feel Fiennes’ cardinal wrestling with his beliefs. For Berger, the challenge was capturing that wrenching journey for moviegoers.
“Ralph’s role is a quiet one, so it’s played mostly behind his eyes,” says Berger. “I was always struck by the miracle of that, as you can see his thoughts unfolding” without words.
Fiennes says he signed on to “Conclave” after seeing Berger’s finished cut of “All Quiet On The Western Front,” the third film adaptation of the epic 1929 book about the horrors of World War I. “What’s great about Edward is he loves to take on films that challenge him, and he is so open to whatever is happening on the day,” he says.
Berger says he often reflects on advice he heard that Harvey Keitel once gave Quentin Tarantino. “Harvey apparently told him that whatever you do (as a director), don’t take away the first take from an actor,” he says. “If you load up your actors with ideas for a scene beforehand, then suddenly whatever they were going to bring to the moment goes out the window.”
Despite the Catholic framework of “Conclave,” Berger wanted to make a movie that was less religious exploration and more a procedural in the vein of “the great (director) Alan J. Pakula’s movies such as ‘The Parallax View’ and ‘All the President’s Men,’” he says. “I wanted a movie like that.”
As “Conclave” steamrolls to its striking conclusion, it’s easy to imagine that Pakula, who died at 70 in 1998, would be proud.
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