In the dark: Leader movie reviews

‘The Two Popes’ frames theological debate as character study

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It’s a film with very few surprises and almost no plot, filmed in Italy and Argentina but essentially a two-character stage play, and yet, “The Two Popes” could have been twice as long and I still would have been raptly fascinated.

The majority of the film is focused on a “secret” meeting — in this context, “secret” means the same thing as the film’s “inspired by true events” tag, which is to say, “This never actually happened” — between Pope Benedict XVI, shortly before he stepped down to the role of pope emeritus, and then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, shortly before he would succeed Benedict as Pope Francis.

The documented real-life differences between the devoutly traditionalist Benedict and the relatively progressive Francis are so stark that, if they were purely fictional characters, whoever wrote them would be dismissed as a hack, and indeed, the dialogue between “The Two Popes” is unafraid to have its characters comment on their own contrasts in an almost explicit fashion.

What makes “The Two Popes” work, then, however much its narrative clearly sympathizes with Francis over Benedict in their disagreements, is how humanely it renders both men, even as it grapples openly with their respective flaws.

Flashback scenes explore not only the origins of Francis’ turn to the priesthood, but also his morally complicated role in Argentina’s “Dirty War” of the late 1970s through the early 1980s, during which a number of his fellow Jesuits accused him of cozying up to power and not doing enough for the country’s “disappeared” people.

Likewise, while Benedict’s past is barely touched upon (no mention is made of his enrollment in the Hitler Youth, as was legally required in Germany at the time), “The Two Popes” treats it as a given that he knew about the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse problems long before they were made public.

Regardless of whether one agrees with Benedict, that the church should concern itself with timeless truths that transcend any contemporary reality, or with Francis, whose ministering to the faithful is shown as inseparable from his hands-on engagement with the real world around him, “The Two Popes” portrays both men as we might hope they actually are, behind closed doors.

Francis is shown as remorseful over what he did (and didn’t do) during the “Dirty War,” to the point that he initially considers himself unworthy for the papacy.

And just as Benedict is portrayed as protecting his priests with his silence, so too do we learn that his punishment is God’s silence, because no matter how much he prays, he can no longer hear the voice of God, which we’re told was the real reason he chose to step down.

The weight of this material is both leavened and given all the more gravitas by the two men playing Benedict and Francis; Sir Anthony Hopkins, who requires only minimal prosthetic makeup to pass for Benedict, and Jonathan Pryce, who looks so much like Francis, without any makeup at all, that the Internet made a meme out of their uncanny resemblance years ago.

As much as this film depicts the schism within the modern Catholic Church, it’s also a leisurely, often comic character study, on par with Louis Malle’s 1981 “My Dinner With Andre,” with both of its lead actors in top form, and able to make fascinating conversations about everything from oregano seasoning to shoes to tunes by the Beatles.

Whether you’re a Catholic or not (my folks were raised in the church, but I wasn’t), “The Two Popes” entertains while offering some philosophical fat to chew on.

Stick around through the closing credits to see Benedict and Francis root for their respective countries’ teams in the World Cup, although unlike the Marvel films, I doubt this indicates the birth of a Catholic Cinematic Universe.