The Christmas season is a time for both religious introspection and, of course, consumerism.
It’s also the time families go to the movies, which is why lots of them are released at this time of year.
Among the smorgasbord of films to open in the days before Thanksgiving was “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the Fred Rogers bio-pic featuring Tom Hanks. That film is of particular interest because of its religion connections. See this recent tmatt post: “Podcast thinking: Fred Rogers, Tom Hanks, the Good Samaritan and the ties that bind.”
The only movie to open last week on the day before Thanksgiving was “The Two Popes.” I gave the flick a bad review over at Religion Unplugged, arguing that it needed a reality check. However, there are issues here that journalists will want to think about, as well. Here’s the key paragraph:
Where does the movie go wrong? Benedict did summon Bergoglio to Rome after the Argentine cardinal had resigned, as is custom when someone in that position turns 75. No one knew at the time how the cardinals would vote, except maybe former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Therefore, the movie imagines what a dialogue between Benedict and Francis would be like. In taking us behind the secrecy of the Vatican, Meirelles creates a work of fiction.
“Change is compromise,” Benedict tells Bergoglio.
“Nothing is static in nature,” Bergoglio replies.
Benedict, in response, argues: “God is unchanging!”
The invented dialogue, like in the example above, aims at trying to convey the doctrinal divide that exists between these two men. Benedict is the traditionalist and Roman Curia insider with a thirst for red shoes, while Francis is a regular guy from Buenos Aires and a modern-day Saint Francis. Benedict is the unfunny German and stickler of rules; Francis the progressive man of the people who wants to help the poor and change the church.
It’s this invented meeting and the dialogue that followed that needs further examination.
Reviews can make-or-break a movie at the box office. In the case of “The Two Popes,” reviews from three major news organizations that matter gave it glowing endorsements. Nonetheless, it was a trio of other news organizations (two secular, one religious) that did the reporting by deciding to fact-check the film.
Over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend, “The Two Popes” didn’t register in the top 10 movies in terms of box office receipts — largely because it was given a limited release nationally ahead of Netflix’s plan to stream it starting December 20 to subscribers.
That, however, didn’t stop reviewers at major newspapers from doing write-ups on the movie. In its review, The Associated Press didn’t seemed bothered by it at all, even calling the movie a bromance between Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. Here’s how the AP wrote it up:
The whole scenario is a work of imagination. There are few institutions with more private innerworkings than the Vatican. Usually, we get little more than a puff of white smoke. “The Two Popes” aims to go not just inside the Church but imagine a deep dialogue between the two pontiffs. “The Two Popes” is a fantasy of impossible intimacy.
It’s also a riveting two-hander paced by two fabulous actors in ping-ponging conversation. They are opposites: Pope Benedict is a conservative, a German and a loner who eats dinner in solitude. Bergoglio is a reformer, an Argentine, an avid soccer watcher and, gasp, an ABBA listener. When they meet at the papal summer retreat, their conversation quickly turns into a theological volley on matters of sacrament, homosexuality and footwear.
Similarly, The New York Times review is also largely favorable, with this paragraph standing out:
My own view on the matter is: I’m Jewish, and also temperamentally more inclined to ponder secular details than sacred mysteries. But when Benedict and Bergoglio are together — first at the castle and then, in the film’s most beautiful section, in a small room abutting the Sistine Chapel — the actors draw out both the spiritual and the psychological dimensions of their characters. The interplay, a duet with sweet and eccentric harmonies, is fascinating to observe, even as it undermines the overall structure of the narrative.
That edifice is at once intellectually rigid and formally rickety. If “The Two Popes” had consisted entirely of two old men talking, it might have been a masterpiece. But the conversation is interrupted by flashbacks that chronicle Bergoglio’s early life, as a young scientist called to the priesthood and as head of the Jesuit order in Argentina during the military dictatorship of the 1970s.
In a third review, this one by the Los Angeles Times, the review was also positive, calling it “heaven-sent” in their headline.
“Inspired by true events,” “The Two Popes” in effect expands on reality, imagining a series of intense conversations over a few days in 2012 between Pope Benedict XVI (Hopkins) and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Pryce), a man who was in many ways his philosophical opposite.
While the nature of the behind-closed-doors relationship these men may or may not have shared continues to be debated, one reality is clear: In 2013 Benedict became the first pope in more than 700 years to resign of his own volition, and a month later the Argentine cardinal became Pope Francis. “Two Popes” posits a connection between these events, and elaborates on what it might have been.
Once again, there are questions to ponder. Not all news organizations saw “expanding reality” a good thing. Some actually decided to fact-check the film (kudos to them!) and among the more noteworthy treatments came from USA Today, Slate and America magazine.
My favorite came from USA Today, where the fact-checking came through some reporting in the form of an interview with director Fernando Meirelles in a question-and-answer format:
Did the two popes really share Fanta and pizza?
Not really. “The Fanta is real,” says Meirelles, alluding to Pope Benedict’s long-documented love of the fizzy orange drink. And “the two popes did meet three times before Pope Francis was elected. So the meetings are real as well. But the pizza I just came up with. That was my thing.”
They also probably never watched soccer together.
At least, not as joyously as the film portrays. “It seems Pope Benedict doesn’t like (soccer); he likes Formula 1,” Meirelles says. “It would have been a good opportunity, but we really made this up.” In fact, the Vatican even released a statement in 2014 saying Pope Francis and ex-Pope Benedict would not likely not be watching together when their home countries Argentina and Germany faced off at the World Cup Final.
Indeed, the soda is real, the soccer isn’t.
What also isn’t real is much of the film. If you really want to see this movie, then definitely do your homework and read the very good reporting that went beyond the fawning reviews.
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