Another little Conclave thinkpiece and this time I’d like to touch upon Lomeli’s observations about the Cardinals. If nothing else, Jacopo was surely eagle-eyed as far as discerning one’s character went.
He describes Tedesco as ‘a retired butcher, perhaps, or a bus driver’ comparing him to ‘a figure from another century’ - Gioachino Rossini, a XIX century Italian composer.
He thinks Tremblay a ‚cleric in some Hollywood romantic movie’, likening him to Spencer Tracy, an American actor during Hollywood‘s golden age.
Both of them are further revealed as distrustful figures of the public eye, performance-led and performance-based, highlighting their careful facades, their thruthlesness, their deceptions.
Adeyemi is ‚statesmanlike‘, ‘a figure carved in ebony’, 'the edifice'
Joshua’s carapace is high-bourn and seemingly impenetrable, his almost innate pride frozen, unshakable - or is it? It shatters exactly once, in the privacy of his 'cell' and with no one but Lomeli as witness, yet the very next time we see him (which happens quite soon) it is in its rightful place once again, the shattered pieces as unyelding as always.
Bellini, who looks 'more than ever like a martyred saint', reminds him of a bird - a stork
'Brilliant but neurotic', a wise creature symbolising hope, new beginnings, loyalty and direct opposition to evil but, combined with Aldo's own failings it becomes quite a fidgety, almost scared bird.
Finally, Jacopo looks at himself, at his profile that's become 'bleaky with age' and sees 'some elderly moulting bird'
Again a bird - a symbol of freedom and hope, yet not in all its glory, flying high with its wings spread wide, but old, hunched, dried-up, unable to sweep the skies above,forever confined to the ground below instead.
P. S. I fully believe that the casting agent read the passage and phoned Ralph Fiennes immediately because the description is spot on. He does look like an elderly moulting bird! My gentle creature.
