‘Conclave’ Movie Built a replica of the Sistine Chapel in 10 weeks

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for “Conclave”, is now playing in theaters.

It’s no secret that the Vatican bans filming in the Sistine Chapel, and the Catholic Church headquarters would make no exceptions for Eduard Berger‘Conclave’.

The film is based on the thriller of the same name by Robert Harris Ralph Fiennes as Cardinal Lawrence, who is charged with overseeing the election of a new pope after the current pope dies. It was up to production designer Suzie Davies to take on the mammoth task and get creative in recreating one of the world’s most visited tourist attractions, Michelangelo’s pièce de résistance.

Enter the Cinecitta studios in Rome, no stranger to home recreations. Davies found incomplete, flat-packed sets from an earlier production. “It was packed into eight-by-four-foot flats, and we rebuilt them,” she explains.

But the set needed work with flooring, repainting and carpeting. Davies found the local craftsmen who built the original set and called on them. “The painting crew were extraordinary and we put the Sistine Chapel back together in ten weeks,” says Davies.

The result was a seamless reconstruction.

Later in the film, during a new vote, an explosion rocks the chapel, causing dust and debris to fall on the cardinals. The aftermath of the explosion was all smoke and mirrors, accompanied by the magic of special effects.

A special effects rig was placed as high as possible on the studio ceiling – “about 60 to 70 feet high, and they placed pistons filled with lightweight rocks and dust that fell on the cardinals,” Davies explains. Instead of stuntmen: “It was the cast and background performers who were under all that rubble. We had to be careful with the dust so people didn’t inhale it. We shot about four takes of that explosion. I had a brilliant props team come over and tidy everything up, and we reset and went again,” says Davies. Although such a scene can be very time-consuming, “it went pretty quickly because everyone was so prepared. It was military precision.”

The year in which the story takes place remains ambiguous, and Davies and Berger wanted to show how the mysterious and intriguing world of the Conclave has developed over the years. “We played with a combination of what we think we know about the Vatican, and what Edward and I decided our world behind closed doors would become.”

That world was the Casa Santa Marta, the residence where cardinals lived during the conclave. Very few priests live there. Since much of the drama takes place there, Davies wanted the world to feel “a little more sinister and hint at something underhanded.”

She says: “It was about creating an almost hermetically sealed prison, albeit a very posh prison, but also with modern amenities.” Berger embraced the idea of ​​cardinals on their phones, smoking and vaping to add beats to each character. Those details helped Davies flesh out a backstory. “There’s not much clothing in the rooms they lived in. Some got a better deal than others. How did John Lithgow’s character manage to get a palatial place?’ asks Davis. “Towards the end you realize he’s been negotiating the whole time, so he probably bribed someone to get that room.”

Cardinal Lawrence, on the other hand, is not so duplicitous, and Davies leaned on that. ‘It doesn’t occur to him that he should get a better room. It’s probably on the ground floor, next to the elevators.’

Through research, Davies discovered that many of the rooms were unused and virtually untouched. But it was all about details. They have the same bed, but each headboard was a different color, or the blanket was a different color, and it was about who had gold, who had bright green or who had red?

Davies thanks her fellow department heads for the collaboration: cameraman Stéphane Fontaine and costume designer Lisy Christl. “Those rooms in themselves would have been very dull and airless in the wrong direction, if Stéphane had not lit them so beautifully, and Lisy had dressed those characters in those beautiful costumes.”

Davies worked closely with Fontaine to help realize the idea of ​​opposing themes. Davies explains: “We discovered that the whole film was about balancing light and dark, honesty and lies, gold and silver, contemporary and traditional.” While she incorporated that into her sets, Fontaine incorporated that into his lighting. Casa Santa Marta a visually darker world with linear patterns and darker lighting. In contrast, “The Sistine Chapel was lighter and had a sense of freedom,” says Davies.