'Conclave' and Ralph Fiennes go for the (papal) throne

NEW YORK (AP) — Robert Harris had just completed a trilogy of novels about Cicero when he watched the election of Pope Benedict live on television. As a chronicler of power and its mutations, the scene — the Sistine Chapel smoke signaling a decision, of course, but also the whole, secretive tableaux — fascinated him.

“Just before the pope comes out onto the balcony and reveals himself, the windows on either side fill up with the faces of the cardinal electors who had come to watch him,” Harris says. “And the camera pans along the faces — elderly, crafty, cunning, some benign, beatific. And I thought: My god, that’s the Roman senate. That’s the old men running the whole institution. I thought: There must be stories here.”

That stoked Harris to write “Conclave,” a 2016 novel that went inside the Vatican to imagine how “the ultimate election,” as he calls it — with the added intrigue that the contenders must pretend they don’t want to win — might unfold.

As page-turning as Harris made his novel, it might not have seemed the stuff of Hollywood. A bunch of old men in robes sitting inside and picking a pontiff is not your average elevator pitch. But director Edward Berger’s adaptation, starring Ralph Fiennes as the cardinal leading the conclave, manages to be that rare thing in today’s movie industry: a riveting, thoughtful, adult-oriented drama acted out through dialogue by a sterling ensemble.

“Yeah, we used to have ’em. A lot. We don’t really have ’em anymore,” says Stanley Tucci, who co-stars as Cardinal Bellini. “You have people who have been doing this for a long time, so it’s a very mature film. If you take all of our ages and add them up, well, I don’t want to know what the number is.”

“Conclave,” which Focus Features releases in theaters Friday, has already been drafted into a runoff of its own. The film, Berger’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front,” is considered a top Academy Awards contender, including Fiennes for what would be his third nomination. (He’s never won.) In a Hollywood that years ago lost belief in the mid-budget adult drama, can “Conclave” restore the faith?

“Conclave” wasn’t made with the Vatican’s involvement; it was shot at the legendary Rome studio Cinecittà. The film, made for about $20 million and scripted by Peter Straughan, is primarily a procedural, albeit one with a spiritual dimension.

“I wanted to make it like ‘All the President’s Men,’” says Berger. “It was my opportunity to make a film like a political thriller from the ’70s — for Ralph to feel claustrophobic, to sit in a dark room and all we hear is the hum of a fluorescent light and his breath."

To a large degree, it’s a movie that resides on Fiennes' face. His Cardinal Lawrence spends much of the film listening, strategizing and searching — himself as much as anyone else — as he weighs rapidly shifting allegiances and uncovered secrets. The smoke of “Conclave,” you might say, is in close-ups of Fiennes, a master of the subtle shifts of expression.

“When you know the camera is on you and it’s close, that’s when you know your inner world has to speak,” Fiennes says.

It’s a talent that Fiennes has honed through genuine investigation. He recalls watching BBC’s “Face to Face” to study how faces shift when asked probing questions. For an acting workshop, he once told students to interview themselves, and watch the facial responses. “What does the human face do in real life that an actor can learn from?” Fiennes says.

Tucci and Fiennes have sporadically worked together (“Maid in America,” “The King’s Man”), but after plans fizzled for Tucci to direct Fiennes in a film about George Bernard Shaw, they sought a more substantial collaboration. Tucci’s scenes are almost entirely with Fiennes. The rest of the cast includes Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow and Brían F. O’Byrne.

“It made me really love acting again,” Tucci says, speaking from home in London. “Not that I didn’t love it, but you sort of start to burn out after a while. After 42 years, you’re like, ‘Why am I still doing this?’ You have those times where you question. And then this is like, ‘Oh that’s it. There you go.’”

Doubt, itself, is a major theme in “Conclave.” When Lawrence first speaks to the assembled cardinals, he makes the case that doubt, not certainty, should guide their search for a new pope. As the film continues, Lawrence’s predicament weighs increasingly heavily on his faith in the church. It’s the aspect of the character with which Fiennes most connected.

“As you get older, I have more doubts,” Fiennes says. “What does anything mean? I don’t know what anything means. What is the value of what I do? I don’t know. I have an impulse to follow a scene, to choose a project — what’s its meaning?”

“I just think: Things emerge and I like to let things come to me,” he continues. “Let accident be apt, you know? There are people in this business who develop stuff. ‘I want to play this part. I want to make this film with this director.’ That’s fine. I’ve done that and I may do that a bit more. But I feel more and more: What’s round the corner that I don’t know about?”

But sliding into Lawrence proved a natural fit, even when it came to the vestments. In preparation, Fiennes was allowed to try on a real cardinal’s clothes. He liked the feeling.

“The truth is skirts are quite comfortable,” Fiennes says. “Our clothes in the film are made of a heavier fabric and quite a lot of skirtage to maneuver."

“You feel quite strong in them," he adds. “You feel quite powerful.”

The 61-year-old isn’t inclined to indulge in the Oscar talk, though. When asked, he gently demurred, agreeing instead with Berger, who sat beside him during a recent interview in New York, that he’d let the film speak for itself. That is, of course, the way Lawrence might respond to someone saying he should be pope.

“I don’t think many actors, movie stars, can convey intelligence and a kind of suffering humility quite the way he can,” says Harris.

The film is also laced with quandary over the role of women in what Berger describes as “the oldest patriarchal institution in the world.” The twists and turns of “Conclave” ultimately arrive at what would be an earthquake of a development for the Catholic Church.

“I would absolutely love to screen it for the Vatican. We’ve shown it to Catholic organizations and priests,” says Berger. “I know from the cardinals we spoke to, they all said, ‘We’re all going to be watching your movie.’”

As Harris neared publication, he received a letter from the then British cardinal, the late Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. Having recently rummaged through his office, Harris digs out the letter and reads it. (In the book, the main character is called Cardinal Lomeli.)

“Before the reviews come flooding forth, I wanted to write and say how much I enjoyed ‘Conclave,’” Harris reads. “You certainly did your homework. I particularly admired your depiction of Cardinal Lomeli as a cardinal the likes of which all we cardinals would wish to be: holy, subject to doubts, intelligent, humane and totally loyal to the church. Well done.”

He concluded: “As to the startling ending, I said to myself: After all, it’s only a novel.”

This image released by Focus Features shows Lucian Msamati in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes in a scene from "Conclave." (Philippe Antonello/Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Brían F. O'Byrne, left, and Ralph Fiennes in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Sergio Castellitto, center, in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Isabella Rossellini in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus features shows director Edward Berger, left, and actor Ralph Fiennes on the set of "Conclave." (Philippe Antonello/Focus Features via AP)

Ralph Fiennes, from left, director Edward Berger and Stanley Tucci pose for portrait photographs for the film "Conclave'"on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Ralph Fiennes, from left, Isabella Rossellini and Stanley Tucci, pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Conclave' during the London Film Festival on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, right, in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

This image released by Focus Features shows Ralph Fiennes in a scene from "Conclave." (Focus Features via AP)

Ralph Fiennes, from left, director Edward Berger and Stanley Tucci pose for portrait photographs for the film "Conclave'"on Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024, in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are embracing wildly different strategies to energize the coalitions they need to win as the campaigns enter their final sprint.

Follow the AP’s Election 2024 coverage at: https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.

Here’s the latest:

Her comments Wednesday come after Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly said Trump wanted military generals like Adolf Hilter’s.

“Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump in an interview in The Atlantic. To which the former president responded, “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”

Harris said the comments were shocking unacceptable and were a window “into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best, the people who have worked with him side by side in the Oval Office and situation room.”

Trump has two events Wednesday including a “Believers and Ballots Faith Town Hall” with the state’s Lt. Gov. Burt Jones at Christ Chapel in Zebulon, Georgia. He’ll then hold a rally in Duluth on Wednesday evening.

Last month, a special prosecutor announced he decided not to pursue charges against Jones over efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss in the state.

Jones was one of 16 state Republicans who met at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020 to sign a certificate stating Trump had won Georgia and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Democrat Joe Biden had been declared the state’s winner.

Foreign adversaries have shown continued determination to influence the U.S. election –- and there are signs their activity will intensify as Election Day nears, Microsoft said in a report Wednesday.

Russian operatives are doubling down on fake videos to smear Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, while Chinese-linked social media campaigns are maligning down-ballot candidates who are critical of China, the company’s threat intelligence arm says.

Meanwhile, Iranian actors who allegedly sent emails aimed at intimidating U.S. voters in 2020 have been surveying election-related websites and major media outlets, raising concerns they could be preparing for another scheme this year, the tech giant said.

The report serves as a warning – building on others from U.S. intelligence officials – that as the nation enters this critical final stretch and begins counting ballots, the worst influence efforts may be yet to come. U.S. officials say they remain confident that election infrastructure is secure enough to withstand any attacks from American adversaries. Still, in a tight election, foreign efforts to influence voters are raising concern.

▶ Read more about foreign influence in the election

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan is keeping his cards close to the vest on whether he’d be up for serving in a potential Kamala Harris administration.

“I really, unfortunately, have no comment on my future,” said Sullivan, a key architect of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, when asked about the prospects of him serving in a future Democratic administration at a Brookings Institution forum in Washington on Wednesday.

Sullivan, 47, has served as a key adviser to Biden, Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. His wife is Maggie Goodlander, a former Justice Department official in the Biden administration. Goodlander is running for the House seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Rep. Annie Kuster.

At least 97,000 people in Wisconsin cast absentee ballots in person on the first day they could, leading to long waits at some polling sites that were made worse by an overwhelmed computer system that clerks use to process ballots.

Republicans and Democrats have been pushing voters to cast ballots early, leading to the surge and reports of people waiting in line for hours at clerks’ offices and other polling places around the state Tuesday.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission reported Wednesday that 97,436 people voted in-person on Tuesday. That is up from 79,774 who cast ballots on opening day of in-person voting in 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic that year, in-person voting numbers were down while absentee voting by mail was higher.

▶ Read more about voting in Wisconsin

The former president has long denigrated early voting and vote-by-mail as part of his longstanding practice of casting doubt on the security of elections. He told Fox News Radio on Wednesday that he’s “very mixed on it.”

But he also says he’s pleased by reports that large numbers of Republicans are submitting their ballots before Election Day on Nov. 5.

Trump is registered to vote in Florida.

Speaking on Fox News Radio on Wednesday, Trump claimed the Democratic vice president is taking Wednesday and Thursday off.

She isn’t. Harris is visiting a Philadelphia deli Wednesday to thank supporters before attending a CNN town hall in the evening. On Thursday, she goes to Atlanta to hold a rally with former President Barack Obama and rock star Bruce Springsteen.

Trump this week called Harris “lazy as hell” and claims he’s campaigning harder than she is.

Harris’ town hall Wednesday night takes the place of a second debate she offered to do with Trump. The former president and Republican nominee rejected that offer. He’ll be in the Atlanta area this evening at an event hosted by the pro-Trump Turning Point Action group.

It’s the first time voting for Gus, who just turned 18.

“I’m excited about it,” Walz told reporters Wednesday on his way in to the Ramsey County Elections office.

Minnesota started early in-person voting Sept. 20 but the governor has been on the campaign trail most of the time since Vice President Kamala Harris picked him as her running mate.

Tim and Gwen Walz also voted early at the same office in 2022.

Driving up turnout in the city is critical for her chances in Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state.

Harris is visiting Pennsylvania for a CNN town hall in nearby Delaware County, where she’ll take questions from undecided voters. Her campaign said the town hall was arranged when Donald Trump declined to participate in a second debate with the vice president.

A new series of Kamala Harris campaign ads seek to highlight increasingly perilous medical care for women since the fall of Roe v. Wade by telling the story of a Texas woman who got a life-threatening infection when she couldn’t get proper treatment after she miscarried and how she may no longer be able to have children.

In one ad, the woman identified only as Ondrea details how excited she was to have a girl only to find out that the baby wouldn’t survive after her water broke too early. She was denied an abortion and eventually went into labor.

“Immediately after her birth, I was in the worst pain of my life,” she says, as she and her husband are pictured in her living room near a framed photo of the baby’s ultrasound. She then developed sepsis, a life-threatening pregnancy complication.

The ad is part of a final push by the Democratic nominee to highlight how medical care has grown increasingly unstable for pregnant woman — including for those who never intended to end a pregnancy — since three justices appointed to the Supreme Court by then-President Donald Trump helped overturned abortion rights.

Ondrea blames Trump for her situation.

“It almost cost me my life, and it will affect me for the rest of my life,” she says in the ad.

▶ Read more about Harris’ new ads on abortion

Millions of Americans can’t afford to buy a home or rent a suitable apartment, making housing a central issue for voters in the upcoming presidential election.

The biggest single reason homeownership is out of reach for many is there aren’t nearly enough homes for sale to balance out the market between buyers and sellers.

The shortfall, which some economists say ranges from 1 million to around 4 million homes, has for the better part of the last decade fueled bidding wars that boosted the median sales price of a previously occupied U.S. home to an all-time high of $426,900 in June.

Higher mortgage rates have also kept many home shoppers on the sidelines.

Against this backdrop, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have put out proposals they contend will make the American Dream accessible to more Americans.

Harris’ campaign has laid out a detailed roadmap of policies aimed at expanding access to affordable housing both for homebuyers and renters that includes offering first-time homebuyers up to $25,000 in down payment assistance and tax incentives for builders and federal funds for cities to speed up construction.

Trump says he’ll create tax incentives for homebuyers, cut “unnecessary” regulations on home construction and make some federal land available for residential construction, though the campaign’s platform doesn’t include any details.

▶ Read more about the housing issue in this election

Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff is warning that the Republican presidential nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “did some good things.”

The comments from John Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, came in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic. They build on a a growing series of warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final weeks.

Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat “suckers” and “losers.” Still, his new warnings came just two weeks before Election Day, as Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers “enemies from within.”

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,’” Kelly recalled to The Times. Kelly said he would usually quash the conversation by saying “nothing (Hitler) did, you could argue, was good,” but that Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.

In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing “German generals,” Kelly would ask if he meant “Bismarck’s generals,” referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. “Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, “Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”

Trump’s campaign denied these stories Tuesday, with Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, arguing Kelly has “beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated.”

▶ Read more about John Kelly’s claims

Conservatives already have a supermajority on the Supreme Court as a result of Donald Trump’s presidency. If Trump wins a second term, the right side of the court could retain control for several more decades.

Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74, are the two oldest members of the court. Either, or both, could consider stepping down knowing Trump, a Republican, would nominate replacements who might be three decades younger.

“With President Trump and a Republican Senate, we could have a generation of conservative justices on the bench in the Supreme Court,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently wrote on X.

That’s exactly what worries Christina Harvey, executive director of the progressive group Stand Up America. “The real key here is Trump prevention. If Trump wins again, he could solidify right-wing control of the Supreme Court for decades,” Harvey said.

Yet the nation’s highest court has a lower profile than it did in the past two presidential campaigns. That’s despite an early summer ruling on presidential immunity that insured Trump would not have to stand trial before the Nov. 5 election on charges of interference in the 2020 election and other consequential decisions on abortion, guns, affirmative action and the environment.

▶ Read more about the Supreme Court

In battleground Pennsylvania, Kamala Harris warned that democracy and reproductive rights were at stake as she campaigned alongside a former Republican congresswoman.

Going to the same state the day before, Donald Trump served French fries at a closed McDonald’s.

As the 2024 presidential contest speeds to its conclusion on Nov. 5, Harris and Trump are embracing wildly different strategies to energize the coalitions they need to win. Both are making bets that will prove prescient or ill-advised.

Trump’s team has largely abandoned traditional efforts to broaden his message to target moderate voters, focusing instead on energizing his base of fiery partisans and turning out low-propensity voters — especially young men of all races — with tough talk and events aimed at getting attention online.

Harris is leaning into a more traditional all-of-the-above playbook targeting the narrow slice of undecided voters that remain, especially moderates, college-educated suburbanites, and women of all races and education. More than Trump, she’s going after Republican women who may have supported rival Nikki Haley in this year’s GOP primary and are dissatisfied with the former president.

▶ Read more about the candidates’ campaign strategies

A man accused of repeatedly threatening to kill the top elections officials in Colorado and Arizona as well as judges and federal law enforcement agents is expected to plead guilty in federal court Wednesday.

Teak Ty Brockbank, 45, of Cortez, Colorado, has been jailed since his Aug. 23 arrest. Now he’s scheduled to appear in court for a change of plea hearing after previously pleading not guilty to one count of making interstate threats. His lawyer notified the court that Brockbank wanted to change his plea. In federal court, “guilty” is the only other option.

According to a detention motion, Brockbank told investigators he’s not a “vigilante” and that he hoped his posts would simply “wake people up.”

Investigators say Brockbank began to express the view that violence against public officials was necessary in late 2021 and proceeded to make multiple threats against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor, and the others.

▶ Read more about the threats against officials

Trump said the Biden administration needs to find out who leaked classified documents detailing Israel’s plans for a potential retaliatory attack on Iran, implying there are “methods” that could be used to learn who was responsible.

“It’s a terrible situation,” Trump said in an interview with radio talk show host Mark Levin. “You’ve got to find out the person that did it.”

Trump said it is easy to find the leakers, “but we don’t use methods anymore where you can do that. We give the criminals such latitude. We are not allowed to find them.”

The former president also criticized the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

“I thought the leaks from the Supreme Court was just a shame,” he said. “I think that’s something that also should be found out.”

A statement Tuesday night on Trump’s website announced an official complaint had been filed with the Federal Election Commission against the Labour Party and the Harris-Walz campaign for “illegal foreign campaign contributions and interference in our elections.”

The complaint referred to media reports about meetings between Labour and Democrat officials, and a now-deleted LinkedIn post in which a Labour staffer said there were “nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the U.S. in the next few weeks” to swing states.

Starmer said any party members in the U.S. were there as volunteers.

“That’s what they’ve done in previous elections, is what they’re doing in this election,” he told reporters as he traveled to Samoa for a meeting of Commonwealth leaders.

Starmer said the kerfuffle would not jeopardize the relationship he’s tried to build with Trump.

“I spent time in New York with President Trump, had dinner with him, and my purpose in doing that was to make sure that between the two of us we established a good relationship, which we did, and I was very grateful to him for making the time,” he said.

This combination of file photos shows Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, speaking at a campaign rally, Oct. 18, 2024, in Detroit, and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, speaking at a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wis., Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo)

Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump waves at a campaign rally at Greensboro Coliseum, Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Greensboro, N.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Latest: Trump rallies in North Carolina while Harris makes the cable news rounds

The Latest: Trump rallies in North Carolina while Harris makes the cable news rounds

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., attend a campaign event Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, in Brookfield, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)