|
Welcome to Online Film Home! The place for all film lovers. |
|
|
 |
The Two Popes
(2019) Superbly acted and
a lot of fun to watch
Odie Henderson,
rogerebert.com November 27, 2019
Can two Catholic men share the Papacy without
driving each other crazy?
Led by outstanding performances from
its well-matched leads, The Two Popes draws absorbing drama from a pivotal
moment in modern organized religion. --Rotton Tomatoes
The Two Popes is a wonderful showcase of great acting (both the
leads are phenomenal), brilliant casting, effective writing, and terrific
cinematography. -- Sameen Amer | The News International
(Pakistan)
The Pope and a Jesuit cardinal walk into a park. As they
stroll the grounds of the Papal summer home, the cardinal, Jorge
Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce)
attempts to serve his resignation papers. Pope Benedict XVI
(Anthony Hopkins) either ignores his
request or amusingly deflects it by involving Bergoglio in a
conversation about their personal differences.
The
Pope is far more conservative, even questioning if it’s appropriate for the
Argentinian Jesuit to partake in his country’s national dance, the Tango. He
also alludes to a prior conversation between the two in the bathroom at the
papal conclave, where they spoke not of the Alpha and the Omega but the
ABBA. During this sequence, the first of several sharply
written bits of banter in Netflix’s “The Two
Popes,” one gets a distinct “Odd Couple” vibe
from the duo. I almost expected a play on that TV show’s famous opening
narration: “Can two Catholic men share the Papacy
without driving each other crazy?”
Of course, the two men
don’t share the throne of Saint Peter; Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation left him
with the title of “pope emeritus” while Bergoglio is now known as Pope Francis,
the current Pope. Both of their legacies feature sentences that contain the
words “first” and “first since”—Pope Francis is the first
non-European Pope since the 8th century and the first ever from South America;
his predecessor is the first to resign his position since 1415. Rather
than dwell on these historical details, screenwriter Anthony McCarten and director Fernando Meirelles instead craft scenes that
humorously play off what we already know about the eventual paths the two men
will take. The first scene at the summer estate is a fine bit of comic
frustration simply because we know Bergoglio is never going to get that paper
signed.

Essentially a two-hander, “The Two Popes” could have been a dry, somber
affair like “Frost/Nixon” (which I liked, by the way). But the creative teams on
both sides of the camera project a loose, sometimes flashy tone onto the
material and the resulting joy is infectious.
Meirelles, who directed fast-paced, jaunty takes
on serious material like “City
of God” and “The
Constant Gardener,” employs several stylistic touches that draw
attention but do not distract. His choices run the gamut from effectively using
crisp, black-and-white cinematography while depicting Pope
Francis’ past in Argentina to the absurd, out-of-left-field soundtrack
appearance of “Dancing Queen” that’s both a needle drop and a
callback to a prior moment in the film. McCarten’s script has Pope Benedict XVI
wearing a FitBit-style device that constantly scolds him to “keep moving” and
his dialogue is a meaty, dramatic match for the film’s two main
performers.

And what performers we have here! I love movies like this that are basically two character affairs
whose actors have clearly come to play. If the performers are at the top of
their game, the results are often fascinating master classes of give-and-take,
of knowing when to upstage and when to fall back. Those choices become as
intriguing as the characters that result from them. And when Meirelles and
cinematographer (and director, screenwriter, and actor) César Charlone dwarf the two actors in the frame
to show the enormity of some of the Vatican rooms they inhabit, their
performances scale down as well. Hopkins and Pryce are veterans of stuffy, prestigious fare as
well as far less respectable crowd-pleasing attempts that border on the
preposterous. “The Two Popes” falls
somewhere in-between those two extremes, sometimes leaning in the latter
direction but never threatening to falsely court prestige by drifting too far
toward the former.
Though Hopkins’
presence looms larger simply by virtue of his stature, Pryce
has the meatier role here. Ably assisted in flashback by Juan
Minujín, who plays Bergoglio as a young man,
Pryce shoulders much of the film’s emotional weight.
Pope Francis has a sense of regret about
past mistakes that influences his philosophies as an older man; Pryce plays
those scenes with a heaviness of heart that is quite touching. He’s also more
blatantly funny, though Hopkins has a drollness that’s delectable.
“It is a German joke,” says
Pope Benedict XVI after an attempt at humor falls flat,
“it doesn’t require a punchline.”

Hopkins runs a small undercurrent of
mischievousness under his character’s grumpy exterior. You can see it in his
eyes every time he sees a chance to steal the scene from his co-star.
Pope Francis ordering a pizza from the “best place in
Italy” is amusing enough, but when his dinner partner attacks a slice
with the voraciousness of Hannibal Lecter, you can almost see
the scoreboard marking a home run for the guy who played him.
Despite its
desire to entertain while crafting a love letter to Pope
Francis, “The Two Popes”
doesn’t shy away from some of the more unsavory elements of its time period,
though some viewers may justifiably feel it doesn’t devote enough attention to
them. The Catholic Church child abuse scandal is given some
airtime, but Meirelles
makes a stylistic choice of blocking dialogue in one scene that I thought
undercut the seriousness of this topic. There are also interview scenes where
people call Pope Benedict XVI “a Nazi.”

While it’s understandable that a South American
filmmaker would focus more on the backstory of the first Pope from his
continent, I wish Pope Benedict XVI’s character had been expanded in similar
fashion rather than having him be more symbolic of the old man’s lament we’ve
seen more thoroughly in Martin
Scorsese’s "The
Irishman” and Pedro
Almodóvar’s “Pain
and Glory.”
Still, as two-handers go, “The Two Popes” is a great one. Its slightly over
two hour runtime flies by without lagging. The scenes involving how Popes are
selected offered insight into the politics of the process and the editing kept
those moments from becoming dull. Overall, the film is superbly acted and a lot
of fun to watch, which I suppose is not enough hardcore critical substance to
hang three and a half stars on, but there you go.
Delicious
|
|
|
|
Choose an item to go there!
|
| |
|
|