ellicler

[ellicler]

The Ashtray — Queer-coding and Intimacy Subtext between Aldo Bellini and Giulio Sabbadin

an analysis of the ashtray in Bellini's suite, the chess match in progress, shot compositions and adding my interpretation that Robert Harris uses queer-coded phrasing to imply an intimate connection between them beyond what we see on the surface.

Grab your tinfoil zucchetti. But not really. Jokes aside, I don’t want to “prove” anything, just to point out the potential significance of this and how it relates to the two characters in question. This is based on Robert Harris' phrasings in his book, classic queer-coding in literature, the long-lasting history of gay men in the Catholic church and shot composition analysis. My credentials are a summer course on film at NYU, former member of the chess club at school and being gay with an autistic brain.

This post was what made me notice the ashtray, credit to OP for pointing it out. I thought it was a cool detail. When editing a random clip, I noticed how the ashtray is then revealed to us in this scene. This is the first shot from the angle where we see Bellini sitting next to the chessboard and you can see Thomas is covering the rest of the table:

It is only when Thomas moves that we see the ashtray:

[this covering/uncovering technique is also seen when they all turn to look at Agnes in the cafeteria and Tedesco is blocking Benítez sitting in the back until he walks and we can see him]

We then get another angle of Bellini and the table and this shot includes the chair on the other side of the table that we also couldn’t see in the first shot:

Talking to my tiktok pal @tomwambsgansdarkglasses about this, I took a closer look at the chessboard and wondered: Did Bellini memorise and preserve the last chess match against his friend the late pope, keeping it there as a reminder? Has Bellini been playing chess against himself during the conclave? Why is the ashtray there and what does it represent? Does the chessboard represent the late pope/the papacy/Bellini’s inner turmoil? The table features quite a lot in this sequence (covered, uncovered, stared at by Bellini at one point, next to him in the wider shot and blurred in the end). Here’s a clip:

I. The chess match

I returned to the first scene where we see the last match against the late pope and I don’t think this is the same match preserved. There’s enough to assume this is a different match. Different pieces have been taken. Not to mention how impractical it would be to preserve the last match and take it with him for the conclave. Considering what Bellini says to Lawrence in the beginning, we can also assume the late pope was winning, playing with the white pieces and Bellini playing with the black pieces.

II. Is Bellini playing against himself?

It’s not uncommon for chess aficionados to play against themselves so that was my first assumption. Of course the ashtray may be just a meaningless addition by the set design, same as the extra chair and he was playing both sides. But if we assume the ashtray was put there for a reason, taking into account the table features in nearly every shot of the entire sequence, there’s a chance the implication is that he isn’t playing against himself. Another thing my pal pointed out was: Why would he be placing the pieces taken differently, some organised, the others dropped? And more, wouldn’t it be more practical to be placing the taken pieces on the side so he doesn’t have to reach for the other side of the table? Wouldn’t it be easier to remove the ashtray to get more space? The chessboard has already been introduced to us as an accessory associated with Bellini’s chess interest/his grief/friendship with the late pope/papacy. The chessboard could be on the table by itself and it would make no difference. There’s no need for the chair on the other side too. We can see this is a suite and a bigger room than Lawrence’s through other elements in this sequence. Why the ashtray?

III. The ashtray

Around 10 minutes before this scene takes place, we see Bellini, Lawrence and Sabbadin in the stairwells, where we see Sabbadin smoking. This is his fourth scene (auditorium, bus, breakfast, stairwells) and the first in which he’s smoking. So far we’d seen Bellini and Sabbadin often side by side and surrounded by others but never in an intimate setting just the two of them. To me this can be interpreted as a glimpse into all that we haven’t seen, those two characters being closer than what we had previously seen. There’s an ongoing match happening, perhaps started when the conclave began, perhaps because Bellini relaxes through playing. Where did they go after the auditorium? Where were they before knocking on Lawrence’s door before the stairwells? If they’ve been playing chess since the conclave began, they might have been in each other’s company, just the two of them, every night in Bellini’s suite. There’s intimacy in that. While we see it’s common for the cardinals to be visiting each other in their rooms for canvassing or socialising, this is a level beyond that once you consider Bellini’s queer-coding and the subtle implication of intimacy this brings, using their dynamic in the book as foundation. In a story about the Catholic church, wildly known for having a gay subculture and being a common destination for gay men, it seems like an oversight not to make a single nod to homosexuality and queer-coding, in my view. This piece of visual subtext seems to mirror the queer-coded phrasing chosen by Robert Harris in the book to describe their dynamic and the characters, which we’ll revisit soon.

Moreover, if he’s been playing against Sabbadin, he’s playing with the white pieces and winning. Sabbadin, sitting on the side of the ashtray, is playing with the black pieces (emo “undertaker” core). Bellini’s taken pieces are all organised on his side. The few white pieces taken aren’t equally organised, some are dropped near the ashtray.

If the chessboard represents Bellini’s inner turmoil, the late pope, the papacy, the grief, wanting and not wanting, the ashtray represents Sabbadin and his intimate connection to the man himself and the papacy, since he has an interest in becoming Secretary of State in a potential Bellini papacy. The chessboard and the ashtray, side by side. The potential relationship between the two as an added factor in understanding both characters. When Bellini looks at the table, frustrated and not knowing what to do about the simony discovery and what this will mean for the election, he looks at the chessboard and the ashtray. Sabbadin’s point of view is one he has been taking into account throughout the entire narrative and stands next to his inner turmoil and his grief. We had seen that proximity but here we see a potential glimpse into exactly how close their relationship has been through some visual subtext of queerness and intimacy. Watching the film after having read the book, it seems like a visual way of adapting dialogue and descriptions from the book that didn’t make into the movie.

— Further queer-coding in the book (or why I interpret them as being together, in the book at least and don’t think that’s any reach)

I had pointed out before the moments between them in the book are more personal than professional. I like this one where Bellini snaps and brings up his father + first name:

And my favourite being the line that shows not only that Sabbadin has been to Bellini’s suite but also that he chooses to point this out to Lomeli when there was no reason to do so and he could have simply said “I have a suite” or “some of us have suites”:

The book also brings the information Bellini had been Archbishop of Milan before him and of course Sabbadin is introduced in the book as Bellini’s praetorian guard, which, again, is very unique wording:

And Harris doubles down on the description by making Loemli say in the next page:

In conclusion, I just find this all very interesting and my intention is to explore this visual detail in the cinematography with my interpretation of the queer-coding of Bellini/Sabbadin in Harris’ book. Thanks to OP for pointing out the ashtray in the first place, thanks to @ tomwambsgansdarkglasses for going through this with me at 1am last night.

PS: If you think my tinfoil zucchetto is too big already, just wait till you find out that I went to sleep trying to discover what that blue led display in the right corner of the shot/on the other table in his suite is. A minibar/electric kettle/coffee maker that each cardinal has in their suites? I’ve checked the tutorial of Tremblay’s coffee machine and that one seems only his own. I’m trying to find the exact match. This is my idea of fun.

[ellicler]

for months i've been stumped why i can't bring myself to enjoy tedesco. yes he's a scumbag fascist but i have some really really nasty characters among my beloved blorbos. war crimes don't phase me. now i've realised: it's about the feeling of persecution, of punching up, of fighting against injustice. the core impulse has to be relatable to me (even if it's jealousy or envy). tedesco wants to sit on top of the biggest mountain of stuff because... he'd been born into a poor family? and he masks his existential fears with homophobia and conservatism? ok but there's nothing in there that really grabs me, that makes me go 'oh he's just like me fr don't you want to go apeshit sometimes'. and it's fine that other people enjoy him. and i feel better now that i don't think i'm morally superior to them because i'm not attracted to a fascist.

[ellicler]

there's a very interesting fic (still a wip) about aldo who learns that vincent is intersex and has a major breakdown about it (obvs bc he's gay and has been telling himself it's wrong bc The Church Says So). great premise but i'm not sure if aldo is the right character for it. those insane theologian friends of his have been pushing the lgbt acceptance for years now. but thinking about who is the right character for this arc... sister agnes! oh it would be DELICIOUS. women's wrongs!! newly minted prefect for *mumble mumble* dicastery slightly conservative in her leanings has to reconcile her faith and her ideas!! and we already know she has it in her to break the rules when she feels that god calls her to it. but it's a struggle. let her run around in circles!!

[ellicler]

y'all get my vision?

[ellicler]

Aldo Bellini is a worldly man. It is annoying, then, to be in love with a man so clerical that Aldo was speechless when he admitted he'd once had a girlfriend. Thomas Lawrence, who kept his vows of chastity because he believed in the value of promises, Thomas Lawrence who did not even masturbate because he lived by the spirit of his vows and not merely the letter. Aldo is happy for him to fulfill his vocation, he supposes - but then Thomas struggles with the ongoing revelation that the church is made up of mortal men, and Aldo does not.

Aldo was celibate for two years in the nineteen nineties, when he started seminary. Half his friends were dead, the lover he'd expected to spend his life with: men whose deaths he could only understand as figures of Christ's, taking the world's sins on their destroyed bodies. It had brought him to faith, feeling the holy spirit moving in hospital rooms, watching men give their lovers sips of water like viaticum, women prepare them for the tomb. He considers himself to have seen God - but then he left, driven to the only thing that could contain the great and paschal horror unfolding before him. It was two years before he could feel lust again.

He is not sure whether Thomas has ever really lusted like that, visceral and all-consuming, whether the greater mortification for him was the lack of sex or of companionship. He has tried to offer Thomas that companionship, test how far he would accept it, and has found himself Thomas’s particular friend, in that clerical no man's land which can denote anything from a chaste meeting of the minds to marriage in all but name. He doesn’t mind. Of course he has minded terribly. But he came here, did he not, to escape the other thing? He has had love with sex, he has been widowed, he is willing to live differently.

This does not mean he does not fuck. But he does not fuck Thomas. He knows Thomas does not like his little infidelities but feels that he does not have the right to ask Aldo to stop because he is unwilling to break his vows, make Aldo his. Aldo knows it is cruel of him to know how Thomas feels and continue. It becomes a way of punishing Thomas for his stubborness. This is perhaps unforgivable. But Aldo and Thomas are not in a relationship.

[ellicler]

Thomas and Aldo went to Aldo's apartment right after the Conclave

[ellicler]

what will it take to be more than just a man

[ellicler]

It's my headcanon that Aldo Bellini in the film Conclave (2024) decided what he was going to do with his life because he was a young gay man in New York City in the 80s.

He is a very smart guy, college-educated, minding his own business doing whatever job he backs into, possibly with vague ambitions to write or go to graduate school and teach. But it's the summer of 1986 and four of his friends have died. He learns through his church grapevine that a neighbor kid, who is two years younger than him, is in the hospital—with no other details. They didn't go to the same bars, they don't run in the same circles, but Aldo knows what it means to be in the hospital, with no other details.

Aldo is a devout Catholic who has come to terms with being gay, and while he doesn't know what he's meant to be doing with his life, he knows that you visit the sick, so he goes to see his neighbor.

This young man will not live to see the autumn. He is convinced, dead convinced, that this is a punishment, that God is punishing him with this disease because of something he did wrong, because he felt the wrong things and loved the wrong way. He and Aldo went to the same church, they read the same books as kids—they both know what the church says about him (the young man looks hard at Aldo) about them.

Nothing Aldo says convinces him otherwise. The young man knows it, knows it like he knows there's blue in the sky and Hell under the ground, that he earned this and deserves it. The church says so. It warned him. And here he is.

And it's wrong. Aldo is certain it's wrong. What could this young man, this boy, possibly have done to deserve this, when warlords and robber barons and murderers and Nazis are out there, perfectly fine and well and alive. It's not God doing this, it's just a disease. And if the church says otherwise—the church is merely wrong. Not God. Never God.

Aldo's there the night the young man is dying. He doesn't need to ask if their priest has come to see him; he knows Father James has not. But this young man is so afraid of Hell, and so terribly alone.

Aldo brings him Communion and prays with him, and with the young man's permission he anoints him with oil and tells him he's absolved. They both know it's just words. He's not an ordained priest. He doesn't have the authority to do it. It's a sin, probably, to tell this man he is forgiven of everything, when neither of them believe Aldo can do that just because he, personally, forgives the young man of everything he ever did or ever could have done.

But it does bring the young man a measure of peace. In the morning, he's gone.

Less than a year later, Aldo's in seminary. He and his boyfriend cry in each other's arms all night the night before he goes, but he can't stay with his lover. He's called by God and by his conscience, and he's breaking up with his lover in a way that's excruciating for both of them because Aldo is choosing it over him, over love, with his eyes wide open.

At first it's enough, to be a priest, to be able to give peace to people as they die and greet them at birth and unite them in matrimony and listen to their problems. But he keeps hearing the same kind of thing, elsewhere: he hears battered women try to laugh about the abuse. How this is what they get for marrying the wrong guy. How exhausted mothers with four small children and no one to help them tell him that this is their punishment for being too flirtatious as a girl—as if they weren't just girls, themselves, less than 5 years ago.

It's quickly not enough to be a priest. He needs to be someone who can make a change. Who can help. He needs a little power, a little prominence, a little respectability. (He answers with a plain and simple 'yes' when asked if he's a homosexual—it should be career suicide. It almost is. But not quite. Because he's otherwise so focused, so devout and devoted and conversant in doctrine and dogma; so conventional in so many other ways. So appropriate, so brilliant, so rational and serious and photogenic. A new, modern priest for their new, modern age, perfect for New York as of course the vanguard of the next century.)

It gets out of hand, after that. He doesn't really think he's going to make it all the way to the Vatican. But he has his ambitions, and he makes influential friends, and before he knows it there's a real possibility that he's going to be the next pope.

He knows he doesn't want it, that he isn't right for it. That this was always about trying to bring peace to those who are out in the cold, who the church tells they deserve Hell. He won't be chosen by God to make decisions for the whole world. He can't be right and lofty and lonesome, on a plinth, forever, when he only got into this because he was worried about other people.

But many people believe he can do it. Many people want him to be in charge, including men he loves and respects. He is going to disappoint them, to say nothing of himself.

But Aldo didn't abandon God and God won't abandon him. Something better will happen. This burden won't be left on his shoulders.

But the dream is there—the dream of the kind of church he stands for and has been saying they need.

(Developed in conversation with @searchingforserendipity25 and @cardinalgoffredotedesco)

[ellicler]

contrary to popular belief, someone who is fluent in their second language (L2) is unlikely to slip into their first language (L1)  in these circumstances:

if someone just said something to them in L2 (this a big unconscious cue, and you’d be really unlikely to respond in L1 right after that)

when swearing in the middle of a sentence (e.g. “oh merde, i forgot my keys!”)

during sex

when speaking to someone they normally speak to in L2

it is slightly more common in these circumstances:

swearing, as long it’s not part of a sentence (e.g. they might just mutter “merde” if they forgot their keys)

if they’re surprised (especially if falling/tripping or experiencing sudden pain!)

when speaking to someone they normally speak to in L1

in their sleep or talking to themselves

when very disoriented, such as when concussed or on certain drugs

that being said, it is very common for people to intentionally use their first language in front of people who don’t speak it for a variety of reasons (they might use a short expression they only know in L1, call their partner pet names, dirty talk during sex because their partner finds it attractive) – but this is on purpose!

also this doesn’t account for people who grew up in an environment where people often mix multiple languages in their speech (e.g. spanglish or franglais) – in that case, they may accidentally drop an L1 swear into an L2 sentence, though they’ll still generally stick to L2 when speaking to people who only speak that language

[ellicler]

playing around in the sandbox of queerplatonic benítez/lawrence.

and i'm not even talking about stifled desire or weird ecstatic sex dreams, no matter how fun that is. and i'm not even talking one-side pining in any direction, or innocent xiv blurring the edges of what devotion and worship stand for in cardinal lawrence's eyes.

i mean a real, an honest-to-god secret third thing. taking the whole brothers-in-christ thing in a bold new contemporary direction.

deeply intimate spiritual communion happening regularly during walks, and over paperwork, and behind bulletproof glass. all day every day. affirming conversations and touches and looks.

it's passionate. it's intense. it's something like infatuation. it's something like falling in love, quick friendship, human adoration - and nothing like that either.

it's a very clear understanding, a sharp and sudden and very strong connection, and it alters the world around them and it is not like they have a great deal of references for this.

so! naturally, a thought follows on the other. an assumption follows on the other, and as they have taken to an encompassing honesty, it doesn't take very, very long before they hash it out.

it is, all things considered, startlingly easy. nerve-wracking, of course, but there's a route to these things, and if kissing is not entirely pleasant, then it's not as if either of them has a great deal of experience.

they do break their vows together. schedule it in advance and everything!! a whole fraught arc involved, about repression and choice and sacrifice, and recontextualizing celibacy and chastity, and affirming their closeness as a vow in itself.

and it is. fine.

a spiritually meaningful experience! pleasurable in its way! but kinda mid, as far as generally meaningful experiences go. the quiet of a room with the air conditioning on is less erotic than most of their confessional sessions, and the not-take-backies of it give it a weight and pressure that isn't very enjoyable, even going into it together.

not really worth repeating. it's possibly lawrence regrets it at once and mourns his lost chaste chivalric ideal with real anguish, is filled with remorse for besmirching his friend and diminishing their companionship to something base. can't stand to look as benítez afterwards; can't stand to live inside himself.

it's possible benítez has to face the turmoil in his heart with being largely sex-repulsed even about the person who knows his self, body and spirit, the most. to find he prefers pleasure by himself, or not at all; that he does not find truth for himself in the idea of marriage or romantic affection.

no more now than he ever has before, even though he had believed it - even though he does love lawrence with a singular focus he hasn't felt before, as near to possessive attachment as he has ever come, and without the redeeming element of any defined, traditional term to it.

amatonormativity will get you anywhere, even in the vatican!

possibly there's a spin on the last-minute rush to the airport/train station/bus stop on the way to a tiny monastery in the alps to keep the love interest from flying off to london/new york/a tiny monastery in the alps, and an heartfelt heart to heart.

possibly benítez is wearing the same clothes he did when he arrived in rome, unexpected and unwanted. the first time he went out into the world as vincent benítez.

it's incredible, he says (it is possible, even likely, that his voice breaks a little), how much people don't really see him, when he's not wearing white. out of everyone in the world, no one looks at him as clearly as lawrence does. does this have to change, just because they have seen each other's nakedness and desire?

they are not adam or even, or noah's children; they should not need to break their ties because of shame. there is no harm in loving as they do, as there is none in loving otherwise. how just is it to argue otherwise, to work for an encompassing church, while casting themselves aside? he should leave rome, if he feels it is what he is called to go, but not because of shame.

lawrence comes back. lawrence takes his hands with his trembling fingers in apology and says, wrenched with love, with pity: oh vincent. no, it is not fair at all, is it?

he has been a fool. he has lived his life in ignorance of himself, and so narrowly he did not notice it. life to him was the church or marriage, and to have one was not to have the other, and nothing in between seemed possible, or correct, or permissible, or genuine.

they make it work! the times they wash each other's feet after particularly trying days, or the hand massages, and all the quietly ecstatic praying with fingers wound around the same rosary?

those can be sensual experiences too. there's closeness there. also possibly they try out guided masturbation involved from across the confessional grid, but that's a whole other thing.

[ellicler]

He was jumping that table to get to the dean trust me I was the ballot

[ellicler]

Finally got a comm done and its Lawrenitez <3

[ellicler]

And the glass version for true connoisseurs

[ellicler]

"One big question about Hamlet focuses on what a Catholic ghost talking about a Catholic purgatory is doing in an apparently Protestant play. After the religious turmoil of the middle years of the 1550s, Elizabeth's accession marked the establishment of Protestantism as the religion of England: Catholicism was outlawed and driven underground. Two particular doctrinal differences are often used to focus the theological disagreements between Catholicism and Protestantism. The first is the question of transubstantiation and the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The second is more obviously stageworthy: the presence, provenance, and reliability of ghosts. In Hamlet, the ghost's description of his imprisonment 'confined to fast in fires / Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature / Are burnt and purged away' (1.5.11-13) describes the outlawed theology of purgatory, just as the ghost's very presence is anathema to Protestant doctrine, which could not allow that anyone returned from the dead. Horatio, alumnus of a distinctly Protestant university in Wittenberg, a place indelibly associated with Martin Luther's radical challenge to the Catholic Church in 1517, expresses more orthodox reformed views. He questions what the ghost intends, warning Hamlet not to follow: it 'might deprive your sovereignty of reason / And draw you into madness' (1.4.54-5)."

—Dr. Emma Smith, This is Shakespeare (emphasis mine; this sums up pretty well what i couldn't cover about religion in my post on why hamlet isn't dithering. the fact that the ghost is clearly catholic and yet hamlet has been going to THEE martin luther university... either the catholics are right or The Devil Is Here)

[ellicler]

Vincent Benítez is not an idol, he is not a god, he is not a pure clean light; he is just a man. his strength can only last so long. but still he is worshipped, not just by unnamed millions but by the man he loves more than anyone else, the man who welcomed him in with open arms. he feels he cannot complain - after all, he helped Thomas Lawrence reclaim the faith he thought lost, how could he do anything to threaten that? but that silence has left him alone, and tired. the choices left to him - to let himself be placed on a pedestal, one of a dizzying height from which he will inevitably fall; or to ask for help, and place another burden on the shoulders of a weary man - both seem impossible.

he is meant to be the shepherd, but he feels no braver than a newly born lamb.

[ellicler]

[ellicler]

Conclave girlies (gn) I am begging yall to read this article