Three-time Oscar- nominated composer Volker Bertelmann says he was “quite scared” when the script for Edward Berger’s Conclave came across his desk.
“It’s pretty masculine,” Bertelmann tells THR. “The whole celebration is mostly about the patriarch system, and I’m not a big believer in that. I believe in my own gender, but every woman and everyone who is different has a purpose to be on Earth. … If [a movie] is so in one direction, I can’t enjoy it. That was one fear.”
Bertelmann, who has worked with Berger on four previous films, has a deeply religious background, too: He was raised in a very strong religious community in Germany, where men and women were separated at church. He also was a part of the youth organization of that Christian community. “I know nearly everything about the Bible and the mission and what you have to do to get others to believe, and also the control system that is in that whole installation of belief. I believe in faith and in warmth, and trust even something that is God, that is maybe in yourself, so when I saw a chance to bring across something that talks positively about me being a human and being on Earth, the first thing I was thinking was to find a religious musical theme that expresses the ethereal, idealistic state of mind of religion — or what everybody thinks religion is. Like what the popes and the cardinals try to reach but they don’t reach at all because they are humans and have their own sins.”
And the fact that Conclave — which follows Cardinal Thomas Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) as he organizes a conclave to elect the next pope while uncovering secrets about the candidates — is a thriller added another layer of excitement to Bertelmann’s work on the film.
“I try to find music that underlines this idealistic state of mind of a religion and at the same time the tension of the thriller so that you always have this kind of reach that you can’t reach,” says Bertelmann. “Whenever Ralph is having some doubts, the music is playing with that religious instrument, which is an instrument from France called the Cristal Baschet. It’s played with glass rods, and you put water on your hands and then rub these glass rods, and it’s one of the most amazing instruments I’ve ever played. It replaces the choir or the organ.”
The most challenging scene for Bertelmann to score was one of the earliest sequences, where the pope who has died is being transported out of the Vatican in a body bag. “That’s the scene where the music is really propelling up to the end, and then you hear just the dead body rattling in the ambulance. That scene was the most challenging because I wasn’t sure how big I wanted to go and how the power of that scene was, and that was the very last scene that I somehow solved.”
Deciphering that puzzle unlocked the key to other scenes in the movie. Berger loved the outcome so much that he asked to use pieces of that sequence in other parts of the film. “We did variations of that theme toward the end, which is always this kind of propelling sound. There’s this [staccato] string that pumps you into this thriller mood, but at the same time, it’s not really thriller music in the sense of a modern one, and that worked so well, so we thought, ‘Let’s use it elsewhere.’ “
For this film, Bertelmann wrote themes for scenes as opposed to characters, given the sheer number of characters in the story. “Nearly every character has the same emotional state of mind in the film. … So I tried to find thematic topics in the film that somehow can connect the emotional states of mind of protagonists — for example, the longing for peace or the longing for a better life. When I write for a person, I feel a little squeezed in a corner.”
This story first appeared in a February stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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