The Two Popes

How to sell a movie that’s partly a single-room play and partly a political drama—because this is a film about the transfer from one Pope to another. It’s fairly recent history, concerning the election of Benedict XVI following the death of John Paul II in 2005—and Benedict’s renunciation of his Papacy in February 2013, after which Cardinal Bergoglio was elected. The death of John Paul has presented a crossroads for the Catholic Church but it’s not one that it is collectively minded to contemplate at the time.

Benedict (Anthony Hopkins) is asked by Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) for permission to resign. Bergoglio is younger and more progressive than Ratzinger, and their conversation initially concerns the need for the Church to accept some of the unpleasant things that have been done in its name and to change and grow. 

The film delves into the past lives of both men. Bergoglio is almost tempted away from his calling by the love of a woman when they’re both much younger. Ratzinger, being Argentinian, was preaching during the incredibly dark period in that country’s history in the 1970s.

This is a film that’s really about the idea of Faith and the notion of embodying the Chair of St Peter. The Church functions and has functioned daily for two thousand years, but the media only shows interest when there is some sort of controversy, or when there’s an election for the Pope. This process is dramatised twice: Ratzinger then Bergoglio—who becomes Francis. So the achievement of Director Fernando Meirelles, working from a script by Anthony McCarten, is impressive: there is a sense of the expanse of time in these men’s careers against the history of the Church and, more importantly, the social change we’ve seen in the last Century and this one.

Jonathan Pryce has a Best Actor nomination, and Hopkins for Best Supporting Actor—one of those situations where there should be no difference but they don’t nominate them in the same category. It’s unlikely that either of them will take the award but this film is so impressive and so interesting and certainly not at all dry and preachy. The way the men interact with what passes for ordinary life (in this case mostly football) is a bit of comic relief in a filmic experience that’s fascinating.