The Two Popes: Review
(and brief writings on other 2019 films)
In this week’s edition of Thinking Aloud, I’m writing about the new Netflix film The Two Popes which is about Benedict and Francis. I loved the film, and I think it contexualizes some really great questions about ecclesial identity and discernment of the times. I’m gonna try to use this reflection as a way of closing out 2019. But before that, I’m gonna list my favorite films of the year, along with brief descriptions of why I loved them.
First, a tweet or two:
Favorite movies of 2019
The Irishman - I reviewed this here, so I’ll simply quote this part: “this is a movie about geriatric mobsters dying alone in a nursing home. This is an honest portrait of the banality of evil.” (available on Netflix.)
Joker - this is a film that captures the zeitgeist: the alienation, the loneliness, the economic deprivation, the existential boredom, the despair, the rage. Some critics claimed that this is just a glamour profile of the “lone, white male shooter” or the reddit incel, but I don’t think so. I think it’s compassionate, sure, but it’s a film that is ultimately a tragedy. Let us mourn together.
The Two Popes - more on this below. (available on Netflix.)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco - easily the most visually impressive film of the year - the colors, the lighting, the camera angles, the music score, everything just comes together as an act of lavish beauty. This is a movie about home, about the physical structures and familiar and communal bonds that define us. It’s also a movie that makes you mourn gentrification (and displaced black homes, and black wealth, and all the rest) as though you were mourning the death of a beloved friend. Wrenching, but so needed. (available on Amazon Prime.)
Midsommar - while not quite as good as Hereditary, Ari Aster’s sophomore film is every bit as interested in the resurrection of pagan horror in a post-Christian world. This is a film about the limits of Western science and anthropology, the limits of liberalism, the limits of bourgeois ethics. And of course, this film is also scary as hell, as well as jarring in both violence and sex. Not for the faint of heart.
Ford vs. Ferrari - this is a film that displays the craftsmanship involved in building, fixing, and racing cars. It’s also about the lifelong dedication of artists and athletes. It’s also about family. It’s also about friendship. It’s also one of my favorite Christian Bale performances of all time.
Marriage Story - this film sent me into a depressive funk. I have a deep existential fear of marriages that fail without obvious cause: where two people just grow estranged, and try and try but just can’t fix it. Don’t tell the trads, but I’m fully with the Orthodox on the wisdom of economy: sometimes two good people, for whatever reasons, simply can’t sustain the marriage. And there needs to be grace. But anyway, this is a gripping film, with stellar performances by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson. (available on Netflix.)
The Report - the CIA authorized torture, operated black sites, violated every norm of moral, ethical, and legal convention. We know this. The Report gives us the story of how the Senate Intelligence committee report on the CIA saw the light. At a time when people rage against the “Deep State,” this is a reminder that our nation depends on the quiet, dogged courage of her public servants working in institutional spaces. Adam Driver, again. Such a good actor. (available on Amazon Prime.)
John Wick 3 - okay, look, this is just pure fun. Keanu Reeves kicking ass in style. Also this movie sees him fighting alongside dogs. WHOSE A GOOD BOI. For like, extended scenes. I walked out of the theater feeling absolutely giddy.
Marvel: End Game - I’m the first to complain about the choke-hold that Disney has on cinema, the first to admit that the superhero genre can be tiresome and formulaic. But this movie (I won’t call it a film), was an event: the culmination of a decade of world building and plot developments and characters arc. And sitting in the theater with some of my closest friends, experiencing this culmination as spectacle? A highlight for 2019 for sure.
The Two Popes:
In (American) Catholic circles, there is a lot of controversy in reaction to the new Oscar-bait film The Two Popes (starring Anthony Hopkins as Benedict, Jonathan Pryce as Francis.) It is agreed by all that the film takes a lot of creative liberties: most of the depicted encounters and conversations are rooted in absolute fiction. But the substance of controversy is in the depictions of the two popes, and can be summarized this way:
Benedict is depicted as cold, aloof, academic, and a rigid traditionalist and…
I think this is accurate, and am angry because the film depicts him in a negative light, as though the progressive attempt to change the church was a good thing!
I think this is inaccurate, and am angry because actually Benedict was reform-minded and not rigid, and warm not cold!
Francis is depicted as warm, popular, forward-minded, and pastoral and…
I think this is accurate, and am angry because the film depicts Francis positively, as though the progressive attempt to change the church was a good thing.
I think this is inaccurate and am angry because actually Francis is either (A): not as progressive as the film makes him out to be (he should be more progressive!) or (B): not as progressive as the film makes him out to be, and that’s good because I think progressivism is bad.
And where do I stand in all that controversy? I don’t give a flying freakin leap about the squabbles of American Catholic culture war battles. I really don’t. I’m so bored with it. It’s just not interesting. The Church is bigger than its popes, and it’s certainly bigger than a two-hundred year old nation separated from Rome by an ocean.
Latin Mass? I love it. Attend regularly. Mass in English? I love it. Attend regularly. The Church is big, unwieldy, weird, and I try to love it for both its breadth and its depth.
And so I loved The Two Popes because I loved its characters: I loved that these are two larger-than-life figures who are given flesh-and-blood here, who wrestle onscreen with their sense of duty, with their past failings, with their fears and aspirations, with their faith. And I love that this is a film about dialogue, about the graced encounter between different temperaments, dispositions, views of the world.
Recently I saw a headline that said something about how Pope Francis was trying to radically change/corrupt the church. The article took its inspiration from a recent speech that Francis gave to the Roman Curia. Well, I read that speech, and was especially struck by this:
Tradition, today I would like to speak once more of the implementation of the reform of the Roman Curia and to reaffirm that this reform has never presumed to act as if nothing had preceded it. On the contrary, an effort was made to enhance the good elements deriving from the complex history of the Curia. There is a need to respect history in order to build a future that has solid roots and can thus prove fruitful. Appealing to memory is not the same as being anchored in self-preservation, but instead to evoke the life and vitality of an ongoing process. Memory is not static, but dynamic. By its very nature, it implies movement. Nor is tradition static; it too is dynamic, as that great man [Gustav Mahler] used to say: tradition is the guarantee of the future and not a container of ashes.
I am a classical educator who seeks to introduce children to a great (constructed) tradition, stretching from the Ancient Near East (Epic of Gilgamesh, the call of Abraham) to the Greeks (Herodotus, Plato) all the way to the United States (Hamilton, Lincoln.) I believe in studying the past, and more than that, I believe in reviving the wisdom of the past and applying it the questions and anxieties and desires of our contemporary moment. Why study “dead old white men” (Dante was Italian, not white, by thew way…)? Precisely because memory is dynamic, and tradition is the guarantee of the future.
Now, we can talk about what the application looks like. We can argue about whether or not Augustine is right about the idea of just war, or about how much of Aristotle’s understanding of nature (human and otherwise) can be reconciled with the insights of contemporary science. And within the Church, we can argue about ordaining women and gender identity and how much incense to use at Mass. These are by no means frivolous conversations. But the key point is that as long as we are rooted in the texts and prayers handed down to us from age to age, we are talking about how the tradition applies, not whether or not it is relevant or needed.
And I think this is what The Two Popes gets right. It’s fundamentally about two great leaders locked together in dialogue (sometimes friendly, sometimes heated) within the context of a shared tradition, seeking to understand how to live together within that tradition as it takes its present shape in the contemporary moment in which we find ourselves. The tensions, the striving, the disagreements, are all part and parcel with the call we are given to make sense of ourselves and our world.
I said earlier that I’m not interested in Catholic culture wars. But I am interested in the tensions I described above. What is the difference? In the cultural war paradigm, there are two sides: we are the good, pure, correct side and we have to do battle with the bad, impure, heretical side in order to preserve the faith. I think that model is bullshit. The better paradigm, the one that The Two Popes models well, says that there are thorny questions facing all of us, personally, collectively, academically, existentially, and we can only rise to the challenge of dealing squarely with those questions if we foster the kind of friendships that can endure intense disagreement as part of a dialogic effort at authentic deliberation and discernment.
As 2019 winds to a close, and 2020 appears on the horizon, I want to take stock of some of the questions that I want to carry with me into the new year:
Question: what parts of the Tradition have I forgotten, that I need to be reminded of?
Question: what parts of the Tradition have I only engaged with intellectually but need to live into as a matter of prayer and practice?
Question: what parts of the Tradition remain unknown to me, that I need others to show me?
Question: what parts of the Tradition remain unknown to others, that I might be called to show them?
Question: what parts of the Tradition can speak most effectively to the anxieties of our age? And of my age (twenties) more precisely?
Question: what parts of the Tradition can speak to the wounds of the past - personal, collective - and offer healing for the present moment?
Question: what parts of the Tradition speak most effectively to the near future, specifically clarifying our obligations toward shaping that future?
Will you join me, my friend, in wrestling through these questions together throughout this New Year?
What I am Reading Elsewhere:
The Point magazine consistently offers thoughtful analysis, particularly in their Public Philosophy monthly column. In this month’s column, Agnes Callard considers letters of recommendation: “A lot of the time, the rambling, maybe-I-am-unworthy speech is not or not only a practical request. Often, it is a disguised way for the student to ask: “Do you think I should go to graduate school?” or “Will I succeed as a philosopher?” or “How do I compare to others in my cohort?” or “What do you really think of me?” Most students don’t want to ask these questions explicitly, which is a good thing, because I don’t want to answer them."
In the NYT, a great reflection on emotions, language, and the internet. For example, consider how a period mark can signal ambivalence, formality, annoyance. “Yes it’s a lot of meaning to infer from a dot, but it’s socially useful to be able to convey a nuanced level of reluctance, one that’s not strong enough to be worth registering as a full complaint but is not quite full-throated enthusiasm."
Rudy Guliani was interviewed in NY Mag, and said some bat-shit crazy stuff. Here’s my favorite part: “There was one [drug] I was addicted to. I’ve forgotten what it is. The alcohol comes from the fact that I did occasionally drink. I love scotch. I can’t help it. All of the malts. And part of it is cigars — I love to have them with cigars. I’m a partier.”
In The New Republic, the case is made that Rupi Kaur (the Instagram poet) is the writer of the decade. An excerpt: "There are readers who will forever think of Kaur as the first poet they loved. Even if they outgrow her—as is inevitable: I can no longer bear Salinger or Kerouac or Auster or many of the writers I adored as a younger reader…"
On the Law and Liberty blog, Iraqi immigrant (and Ethics and Public Policy Fellow) Luma Simms pens a much needed reflection on what Christian persecution in Iraq means for American Christians tempted to claim persecution for themselves.