The Two Popes

Antho­ny Hop­kins and Jonathan Pryce make for a study in oppo­sites as the co-leads of Fer­nan­do Meirelles’ talky dra­ma The Two Popes. They por­tray men on either end of the same ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum; Pope Bene­dict XVI (Hop­kins) was severe, con­ser­v­a­tive and a great believ­er in the opu­lence of his post, while his suc­ces­sor Car­di­nal Bergoglio (Pryce) was hum­ble, affa­ble and a pro­mot­er of for­ward-think­ing social reform.

Unit­ed in their unwa­ver­ing faith yet divid­ed on how best to express it, their exchange of pow­er embod­ied a gen­er­a­tional chang­ing of the guard that could begin a new era for a Catholic church still marred by scandal.

Meirelles’ film imag­ines the days lead­ing up to this epochal moment in reli­gious his­to­ry as a series of chats between Pope Bene­dict and the future Pope Fran­cis, some walk­ing and some sit­ting. It’s a gen­tle and qui­et movie, the sort that would com­pel blue-hairs to make the trek to cin­e­mas if it wasn’t already a Net­flick. Yet where these unlike­ly box-office suc­cess­es for grown-ups – your Vic­to­ria and Abduls, your Flo­rence Fos­ter Jenk­ins­es — tend to get soft and lumpy, this Papal tête‑à-tête is bol­stered by a firm intel­li­gence. It’s not quite My Din­ner with Pon­tiff, but the spir­it of cere­bral search­ing still makes for a rich meet­ing of the minds.

If any­thing, Meirelles gets in his own way. An undue need to jazz up what would oth­er­wise be large­ly sta­t­ic footage leads the Brazil­ian kineti­cist to scram­ble scenes with snap zooms, cant­ed angles and oth­er assort­ed for­mal flim-flam­mery. With the excep­tion of the extreme facial close-ups that allow the audi­ence to savour every wrin­kle of Hop­kins’ king­ly vis­age, these lit­tle tricks only detract and dis­tract from the act­ing show­case in progress.

The co-leads ver­bal­ly spar their way through decades of regret and intro­spec­tion, a pair of lions in win­ter. Each car­ries with them a good Chris­t­ian shame unleav­ened by their years of devout ser­vice, and Hop­kins in par­tic­u­lar cap­tures the phys­i­cal and inter­nal frailty of the aging Bene­dict. (He wears a smart­watch that con­stant­ly shouts blunt­ly sym­bol­ic encour­age­ment such as, ​“Keep going!” at him.)

Pryce has a slight­ly more youth­ful spring in his step, but both men evince an aware­ness that they’re mak­ing choic­es that will effec­tive­ly build their lega­cy as they go through their twi­light years. It’s a film about abso­lu­tion and for­give­ness as tan­gi­bly real things, not just talk­ing points in a politi­cised debate over the Church’s doc­trines mov­ing for­ward, but also the keys to mak­ing peace with our­selves before we depart this mor­tal plane.

Hop­kins and Pryce run the show, and the two actors have the most legit­i­mate claim to the posi­tion of auteur for this project. The film bends around their tal­ents to offer each the beats of a ful­ly-formed char­ac­ter, from first impres­sions to the glimpses of inner con­tra­dic­tion to the final rev­e­la­tion of their deep­est and most pri­vate selves. For Catholics, these per­for­mances serve as a chance to get clos­er to a celebri­ty with whom ordi­nary peo­ple only get a few sec­onds of eye con­tact. But they’re just doing the same work as all great thes­pi­ans that have come before – ren­der­ing know­able the con­tents of a person’s soul.