Conclave, A Real Pain, And The Legacy Of Tradition

So, here’s the breakdown–I caught up on these two Oscar nominated films this week.

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This week, I caught up on Conclave, which features a very gossipy Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) and a look at the unique tradition of the sequestered conclave process in electing a new Pope to represent the Catholic Church. I also watched A Real Pain, a film about two Jewish American cousins representing two very different sides of the Ashkenazi diaspora post-World War II. Both Conclave and A Real Pain received a number of Academy Award nods this year, and both offer unique looks at two of the oldest religious communities in the world.

I grew up in an interfaith family. My father’s side is Jewish, and my mother’s side is Latina and Catholic. Growing up in New Jersey, I navigated the nuances of being a part of two incredibly different communities. I volunteered at my local parish, and shared a backyard fence with the town rabbi and his family. I would celebrate Hanukkah with my cousins and eat pasteles with my godparents, maintaining a balancing act that few could understand as the oldest daughter, niece, cousin, and grandchild. It was not until my annual Oscar-nominated-films catch up viewing of Conclave and A Real Pain that I recognized the similarities these religious communities bear.

Conclave depicts one of the oldest religious practices in the world through a contemporary lens. The film’s sweeping cinematography shows the Cardinals gathering at the Vatican for the titular conclave, billowing color-coded smoke into the outlying city to communicate their decision making process in electing the new Pope. Before they are sequestered, the Cardinals enjoy their final smoke break and send their last text messages. Catholicism is the oldest branch of Christianity in the world, and the conclave process was created in the 13th century. The first conclave is believed to have been held in 1276, and the sequestered voting process was initially held where the former pope died. Since 1492, the conclave has primarily been held at the Sistine Chapel in Italy.

Conclave depicts Cardinals from all walks of life bearing the same religious throughline and their own unique forms of guilt. Cardinal Lawrence feels guilty to have had his faith shaken so easily by the stress of the election, while Cardinal Bellini feels guilty about the negative impacts of the Catholic Church over a millennia (from igniting centuries of political turmoil to modern-day abuse scandals in the U.S). As Catholics know, the lingering sense of “Catholic guilt” remains enshrined in the culture, from the confession booth to the cathedral and beyond.

On the other hand, A Real Pain reveals two sides of the coin of the Jewish-American experience. Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin) is a free spirit who questions authority at every turn, while battling mental health and substance abuse issues. His well-to-do cousin David (Jesse Eisenberg) is an ad salesman in New York City in an interracial marriage with two children. In a powerful monologue, David reveals that he feels guilty for battling OCD while having a stable and overall joyful life. He meditates, runs, and takes medication, but seldom brings up his condition, because he feels his pain is “unexceptional” and he “does not feel the need to burden people with it.” 

This point is reinforced as the pair of cousins embark on a Holocaust tour that takes them down the path their late grandmother once walked, including the concentration camp she once survived. Seeing the atrocities she overcame gives both Benji and David a strong sense of survivor’s guilt, as Benji states on the train that “we’ve cut ourselves off from any real pain.”

Both A Real Pain and Conclave shine a light on the true meaning of pain through an ancestral and cultural lens. Pain can look like survivor’s guilt, the weight of responsibility, or the increasing divide between tradition and new ideas. Both films point to the same truth–that often, pain leads to progress, and can look different for every generation.

Modern Jewish pain is seeing the rise of a presidential administration that bears some all-too-familiar socio-political markers, and modern Catholic pain is seeing the politicization of biblical texts. While we may never experience the pain of our ancestors in the same way, the path through their pain is a lamppost, guiding us through the treacherous journey of our own.