This is all true, and this movie is being sorely underrepresented in the Best Picture awards chat. My favourite of the year is The Brutalist, but… I think Conclave might be the actual winner.
There’s this "rule" in film editing: don’t show the door closing; just cut to the other side.
It's meant to be a reminder to avoid unnecessary or mundane sequences.
CONCLAVE ignores that entirely.
Characters pause, and shuffle around between lines, as their sneakers squeak on Italian marble. They actually eat and swallow food without cuts, and stop in the middle of important dialogue just to make a Nespresso in real time.
People are calling this a thriller (and I agree), but it's also a Vatican hangout movie. I couldn’t care less about the subject matter, yet I haven’t felt this engrossed in a film in a while. It's all the "fluff" that Berger includes that made everything really work for me. It has so much rich texture.
One of the best of the year - and it's because you see the doors close.