Oscars: Should biopics leave politics blowing in the wind?

Two films tackle social leadership but only one provokes reflection

- FRANK BARRY

The Best Picture nominees at this year's Oscars include two movies whose main characters embody a political truth that escapes too many of America's Republicans and Democrats. Unfortunately, only one of the films allows viewers to see it.

In Conclave, a drama about the selection of a new pope, Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) delivers a brief speech around which the plot revolves. "There is one sin I've come to fear above all others: certainty," Lawrence says. "Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end."

The message is clearly directed at the Church's conservative wing. Unsurprisingly, the movie has been popular among liberals and panned by conservatives. Ben Shapiro dismissed it as "propaganda about the evils of the Catholic Church," and Megyn Kelly called it a "disgusting anti-Catholic film." It's neither. But nor is it really about the Church. It's about politics, and the blindness that afflicts rigid ideologies of all types.