Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins make this imagined papal conversation funny and affecting enough to recommend. Fernando Meirelles is less convincing when he asks their warmth to compensate for the film’s gentle handling of the Church’s failings.
The Two Popes is worth an evening for Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins, though we would not mistake its friendliness for a searching examination of the Church. Fernando Meirelles builds the drama around two men talking through differences that reach far beyond either of them. The attraction is watching capable actors give those disagreements some personal weight. The reservation is that the film becomes so pleased with their company that it stops pressing them quite as hard as it should.
Anthony McCarten’s imagined exchanges have enough humour to make us understand why each man might keep listening to the other. A conversational drama needs that curiosity, especially when its speakers arrive with such settled public identities. Sometimes the dialogue explains a position too thoroughly, leaving the actor to disguise a small lecture as an exchange. The leads usually manage it, but we can occasionally hear the screenplay making sure that nobody has missed the point.
Jonathan Pryce plays Jorge Bergoglio with an openness that makes listening worth watching. His warmth matters because a conversation about the future of the Church could easily become a succession of speeches with polite gaps between them. He gives his partner room, and the exchanges acquire an ease the writing cannot always provide on its own. The limitation is in the portrait: the film is so disposed to like Bergoglio that his convictions receive less testing than they need.
Anthony Hopkins makes Pope Benedict XVI the more troubling and, for us, more interesting presence. We were moved by his vulnerability in the conversations. The performance lets uncertainty intrude on a man whose position seems to demand certainty, so his need to be understood carries an unexpected sadness. That does more to make the disagreement matter than the film’s efforts to reassure us that these men can get along.
César Charlone’s restless cinematography is the part of the film we would most readily quieten down. Fernando Meirelles keeps looking for visual energy when the interest is already in the two performances, and the extra activity sometimes distracts from the conversation. Fernando Stutz’s editing faces a different problem in the flashbacks, where the pace slackens as more of Bergoglio’s past is supplied. Juan Minujín plays Young Jorge Bergoglio, but the extended attention to one man’s history leaves the other unevenly explored.
Mark Tildesley’s production design helps establish the importance of the office without overwhelming the people who hold it. That restraint is useful in a film already inclined to make a great deal of its setting. Bryce Dessner’s music is sympathetic to the warmth of the performances, although we need little encouragement to feel it. We would happily trade some of that reassurance for longer stretches in which the voices alone carry the scene.
The larger difficulty is the gentle treatment of institutional scandal, including abuse, which cannot be settled by making the people at the top more likeable. The film acknowledges troubling questions, then devotes much more care to the pleasures of companionship than to pursuing them. Its humour and the responsiveness of its leads keep it engaging, even when the scrutiny becomes too comfortable. Watch it for the actors, and be wary when their charm starts doing the institution’s work.
