I just loved the idea and the delivery.
I wish they made more movies as interesting and original.
Too many clones of stuff we've already seen and were not interesting originally to begin with.
This film is braver than any superhero/disney bs will ever be.
Everybody in the business should take a hint.
Unfortunately, the studios and producers only notice the profits, and this isn't the sort of thing that has mass appeal (I intend and stand by this pun).
It was a wonderful film, though, and you're right: it's challenging and brave, it relies on the performances and the story of two people grappling with ideas and consciences, and that's really more special than any special effect.
OK but let's start blaming these damned masses: how about watching provocative and fresh art and quit the same old traditional crap?
Hold on, I guess there's a pattern here of tradition, rites, mass, masses and shitty movies.....
Yeah, you're right, I guess. When people won't take a chance or go looking for something challenging or original - take risks - that's on them.
I do get it, though. Most people don't have the cash to go see three or four movies a week, so they go with "sure bets" and play it safe.
There's also some psychological stuff with brand-name-tribalism. I think this is why, when Martin Scorsese says, "Marvel films are basically roller coasters, not really "cinema"," this blob of collective unconsciousness goes, "HOW DARE HE!?" when if they thought about it, they might realise he's got a point.
And then maybe they'd see movies like Scorsese's Silence, or The Two Popes, or The Lighthouse or something.
I don't know about the theological or personal position of Ratzinger or Bertoglio, so I checked a couple of forums to see whether the movie represented both Pope's positions, and people were complaining how Ratzinger's one was manipulated.
In a nutshell, the writer had an agenda a made him say what he wanted him to say.
If one movie is about a personal debate between two real people, and you manipulate the position of one of them, assigning to him words he wouldn't have said, I fail to see how the movie can be wonderful. I fail to see how it could be considered even good.
Frost/Nixon?
This movie...?
Both are great, and both modify history or take liberties, anyway.
Any movie which uses history to tell a story manipulates it to some degree. Some are more accurate than others, but some of them are fantasies. Zulu is a movie which, particularly for its time, refuses to dehumanise the Zulu people, even though it's a British film centred on the British. Yet, it takes liberties, making Henry Hook to be far more disagreeable, cowardly, and reprehensible than his real-life counterpart - or so his descendants claim, anyway.
This film uses dialogue between two Popes to illuminate spiritual discussion, argument within the Church, and the way that people can see through themselves, their weaknesses, their hangups, their reservations, and their ideologies to remember what their real purposes are (in this case, trying to know and enact the will of God).
I don't think that's so far distant from a good moral, or from what any Pope would want people to grapple with. Is it?
Movies based in historical events (or people) usually take some creative liberties to have a more compelling story. That's OK, but that's not what I'm talking about.
The key element in this movie is a fictional conversation between two real Popes. The conversation is completely fictional. And while that's a big creative liberty, as long as the writing was honest, that'd be OK. Otherwise you couldn't make the movie in first place. So don't get me wrong, I'm not against writers taking some creative liberties to be able to create a good movie.
The problem here is that the position and personality of Ratzinger in the movie are basically a straw-man that don't correspond to the real historical person. And that's a big problem when the selling point of the movie is to watch them argue their positions. Even if the conversation is ficiontal, the movie should be honest when it comes to portray their personalities and positions, period. The moment one of the characters becomes a straw-man, the movie goes from being a study of characters to be a propaganda movie. And that's something that can not be excused under the umbrella of creative liberties.
I didn't think of him as a straw man at all, actually; my perception of Ratzinger the character was that he made good points, challenging Bertoglio on many, many points. The power of his debate, the sharpness of his mind, the portrait given here does not seem straw-man at all to me.
Maybe that's why I don't perceive it as being a problem?
I agree 100% with Ace on this, see his reply above.
I personally see Ratzinger as a one dimentional, uninspired theologist, and this movie gave him a fair, flattering treatment. That's something I appreciated, how he looks intelligent and human in it.
Honestly, I thought this was the worst film of 2019, from those I've seen. I thought the script was horribly contrived, I cringed at much of the dialogue (nothing made me roll my eyes recently more than the references to the Beatles etc), the flashbacks awkward and boring. I really struggled through this and see it as a major missed opportunity.
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It's pretty good and very interesting to see how a religion has affected culture.
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