common origins of suffering, euphoria, and ferret

substack

Sylvia Plath (Leon Dabo), Edna St. Vincent Millay, E. E. Cummings, Naguib Mahfouz (Edgar Degas), E. E. Cummings (Édouard Manet), Rabindranath Tagore, T. S. Eliot (Edgar Degas), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Alphonse Osbert)

• When Bellini berates Lawrence about his "precious doubts", he glances around first to make sure no one is going to hear. He's pissed off, but he knows the danger of rumour, and he doesn't want to get Lawrence hurt. It's such a tender little moment
• Throughout the film, we get whispering and muttering, but it's never very clear what's being said. Until the end, when we can hear them all saying "Innocentius". After a discordant time of rumour and speculation, the Curia has finally united around Benitez
• Lawrence's skullcap: he puts it on at the start when he needs to be professional, and tears it off after his improvised homily and the first time he sends Ray to do some investigating, as though he feels he is not worthy of his title. He's not wearing it at all when he sneaks into the Pope's room. But when he distributes the reports, it's back. He knows this is his duty
• The book has a big focus on the role of the media, and we do get some mentions of that in the film (helicopters, camera flashes, etc) but it's incredibly stripped back. The film even changes some scenes to emphasise the role of rumour in such an insular place. For instance, the theatre room does not exist in the book, but in the film it provides space for Bellini's group to plot alone
• The shroud over the dead Pope's face, and the ribbon and around the door, flimsy tradition contrasted with the heavy mundanity of the paramedics removing the body
• The candles all around the Pope's photo, which are the same as the candle in Benitez' room
• Ray letting Lawrence use his glasses to read, which has obviously happened before. I love the solid ground that Ray provides Lawrence
• In the book, Tedesco is terrible at Latin despite, as in the film, demanding it be brought back. The film provides a visual standing for this with the vape. He doesn't actually want tradition, he's just using it as a veil for his bigotry
• Bellini saying the Pope was "always 8 moves ahead", setting up all the Pope's machinations that appear later
• Lawrence being the first person to notice when Agnes and Benitez are trying to speak to the cardinals
• The nuns always working in the background. Their work is shown over and over but the film demands effort from the audience to notice, lest they become "invisible"

“A collection of common glyphs of the poorly understood Memeorite civilization of the Second Silicon Age. Memeorite glyphs possess multiple conflicting interpretations and a complexity of meaning impossible to capture in a few short words. These are rough translations only.”