It’s rare that we get a glimpse into the inner workings of the Vatican, but Fernando Meirelles’ Academy Award-nominated The Two Popes attempts to give us just that. The film, released at the end of 2019, is a dramatised reflection on the relationship between Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), who we now know as Pope Francis.The film draws its title from the fact there are currently two popes alive today - a rarity, considering Pope Benedict was the first to resign the title of his own accord since Celestine V in 1294.
The Two Popes begins with the men’s frosty relations in 2005, with the election of Pope Benedict over Cardinal Bergoglio. A charged conversation about the papacy and the two men’s differing views on the Church, with flashbacks to Bergoglio’s past in violent 1970s Argentina, brings the viewer to the film’s ending: an unexpected but fully-fledged friendship between the two ideologically opposed popes.
Despite Benedict’s traditional, conservative views and Francis’ (relative - it is still the Catholic Church) liberalism, the two popes overcome their differences to share a beer over the 2014 Football World Cup Final between their home countries of Germany and Argentina.
Source: Flickr / Riccardo Maria Mantero
ARTE E CULTURA
ARTE E CULTURA