“THE TWO POPES”: Good shepherds

Published December 20, 2019 by Robert W. Butler at Butler’s Cinema Scene

My rating: B+ (Now on Netflix)

125 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

At its best “The Two Popes” is a monumental acting duel that’ll leave viewers in open-mouthed amazement.

The subjects of Fernando Meirelles’ witty and ultimately heart-tugging drama are the German Joseph Ratzinger (Anthony Hopkins), who would become Pope Benedict XVI, and the Argentinian Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), our current Pope Francis.

Essentially the tale told by screenwriter Anthony McCarten is one of the passing of power from one pope to the next, and how that exchange heralds a possible new beginning for Roman Catholicism. The details are fictional — the spectacularly wrought conversations McCarten delivers are his own creation — but the overall portrait he paints of these two men and the church they represent feels utterly true.

The film begins in 2005 with a convocation of cardinals to vote on a new pope.  Ratzinger — a dogmatic conservative deeply suspicious of efforts to modernize the Church — actively campaigns for the job.  He views the reform-minded Bergoglio, the favorite of the liberal cardinals, with thinly-veiled contempt.

As the two stand side by side at a sink in a Vatican restroom, Bergoglio absent-mindedly whistles “Dancing Queen.”  Ratzinger asks: “What is that hymn you’re whistling?”  Turns out he’s never heard of Abba.

A small moment, but an illuminating one. Ratzinger is an intellectual, emotionally remote, authoritarian, with little or no interest in popular culture. Even some of the faithful dismiss him as a “Nazi.”

Bergoglio is his polar opposite, a beloved charmer with the common touch, a man whose hobbies include tango dancing and soccer (for an Argentinian they are practically compulsory, he notes).

Ratzinger, of course, becomes the next pope.

Cut to 2013. Bergoglio is traveling to Rome to request that he be allowed to retire as a cardinal (“I can do more as a simple parish priest”).  He meets with Pope Benedict at the former’s summer retreat at Castle  Gandolfo. As they walk the gardens old animosities bubble forth; Benedict is highly critical of Bergoglio’s more liberal practices, like giving communion to divorced Catholics.

The rite, answers the Argentinian, is “not a reward for the virtuous, but food for the starving.”

The conversation continues at the Vatican, specifically in the magnificent Sistine Chapel with its Michelangelo murals (the filmmakers were not allowed to shoot in the Vatican; kudos to production designer Mark Tildesley and art director Saver Sammali for creating an absolutely authentic-feeling environment).

Their talk often turns personal. “I can never remember jokes,” Benedict admits.  “Remembering jokes is an essential part of Jesuit training,” Bergoglio shrugs.

This is when Benedict drops a bombshell. Reeling from a scandal at the Vatican Bank that has ensnared one of his closest advisers, not to mention an ever-growing pedophile priest situation, the Pope announces that he will not die on the job. He’s going to abdicate.

Bergoglio is appalled.  “Christ did not come down from the cross,” he protests. What untold damage would abdication wreak on the Church?

“What damage would I do if I remain?” Benedict answers, going on to suggest that the Church needs someone like Bergoglio, a man who watches soccer matches at his neighborhood bar, refuses to live in the palace provided him, prefers a black suit and clerical collar to ostentatious robes, washes his own socks and underwear in the sink and insists on sitting up front with the limo driver.

A good half hour of “The Two Popes” is devoted to flashbacks of Bergoglio as a young man (played by Juan Minujin). He’s in love with a co-worker, but cannot deny the pull of Holy Orders. Another segment describes how during the ’70s he incurred the disapproval of his fellow Jesuits by reluctantly ordering them to suspend their social justice work lest they become targets of Argentina’s right-wing military junta.

These digressions are meant to flesh out our understanding of the man who will become Pope Francis, and they do.  But only at the cost of taking us away from the Benedict/Francis conversation, which is sublimely wonderful.

| Robert W. Butler

Read the original review and more reviews at Butler’s Cinema Scene