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Turtles in Movies   Conclave (2024)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   These comments contains a major spoiler so don't read them if you haven't seen the film. This is an excellent political thriller with great acting about a conclave of Catholic Cardinals voting to choose a new Pope. There are two sequences with turtles. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) has been chosen to lead the Conclave. He asked the Pope before he died that if he could resign as dean and join an order, but the Pope refused, telling him that "...some were chosen to be shepherds and some to manage the farm" and Lawrence concludes that he is a manager. (In this context, shepherds are members of the clergy who provide spiritual care and guidance for a congregation.) Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) was secretly made a Cardinal by the Pope, partly because his church in Afghanistan needed to remain a secret, but apparently because the Pope chose him as his successor. With all of the political manipulations by the other Cardinals and the scandals that come to light, Benitez seems to be the only one there who still believes in the principles of the church, and he gradually becomes one of the main contenders for Pope. For the duration of the Conclave, the Cardinals are locked into the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City where they meet in the Sistine Chapel. During their down time some of them walk around the palace grounds. Standing on a balcony, Cardinal Lawrence sees Cardinal Benitez near a fountain bending down to look at several turtles that are crawling around on the ground, and they have a brief conversation: Cardinal Lawrence: "The Holy Father's turtles. He was very fond of them. A gift from Angola." Cardinal Benitez: "I thought I was imagining them. I love them. They're so clever." Cardinal Lawrence: "Well, here they keep escaping and being run over. (chuckles) At the end of the movie, immediately after Benitez has been elected Pope, Lawrence learns that Benitez was born intersex, a secret that could make people question their most deeply held beliefs about the Catholic Church. Lawrence leaves Benitez and walks into a large room where he sees a turtle on the floor where it should not be. He picks it up and carries it across the courtyard to a fountain in the garden where the turtles congregate. Then he stares up at the sky and we realize that he has decided to keep Benitez's secret, and honor the former Pope's wishes, who also knew Benitez's secret. The turtles are an enigmatic but important symbol that the Director (Edward Berger) used in the film after seeing a fountain full of turtles in the Vatican gardens. This comment is from the IMDB Trivia section: "In a 2024 interview with National Catholic Reporter, Edward Berger [the film's director] spoke about the significance of the turtles in the film: 'We had maybe ten turtles or so. The good thing about them is they don't run away or even if they do, they can't get far (laughs). I remember seeing a fountain full of turtles on the Vatican grounds. They were a gift to the Vatican and when I looked up what turtles mean in different cultures, it turns out they hold a lot of varied significance. As a result, they're great to include in a film because their presence can be open to many different interpretations. In one of those cultures though, a turtle symbolizes transformation and change, in another they symbolized wisdom and age. I thought it would be a nice culmination for Ralph Fiennes to carry the turtle back to the fountain towards the end of the film keeping those ideas in mind.' " ScreenRant.com posted comments from an interview with Ralph Fiennes in which he speculates that the turtles symbolize spiritual independence.