Hacker Cinema
The Two Popes
2019 · Film · 125 min
Directed by Fernando Meirelles
Frustrated with the direction of the church, Cardinal Bergoglio requests permission to retire in 2012 from Pope Benedict. Instead, facing scandal and self-doubt, the introspective Pope Benedict summons his harshest critic and future successor to Rome to reveal a secret that would shake the foundations of the Catholic Church.
4 positive1 negativefrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
The movie “two popes” is pretty good, which some strong acting performance. (Not really historical since that was about a decade ago)
I thought the film the Two Popes gave a good overview of his life and perspective.
To be fair, the question of whether it’s historically accurate is irrelevant because the film obviously doesn’t depict real events with real cardinals… even to the viewer who knows nothing about who is who in the real-life Catholic hierarchy, the terrorist event that triggers a major plot twist should be a big clue that this is a fictional thriller, not a documentary. Apart from that, the setting is contemporary so history has nothing to do with it.
So it’s a gossipy political thriller where the setting is the Vatican, not the White House or the House of Lords. The question remains: is it a reasonably faithful depiction of the way a real papal conclave operates, in both procedure and the negotiation/clique-forming/decision-making process? Catholic friends of mine who know much more than I do about what goes on in Rome actually have the opposite fear: that it is all too realistic and exposes too much about the power games that go on instead of earnestly seeking the good of the faith, and of the faithful. If that’s the case, then in the long run it can only be good because, as Christ Himself said: “you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
Edit: to be fair, there are some flashbacks in the film to historical events taking place in Latin America, IIRC these are also fictionalized but yeah, I could imagine someone who knows the history of that particular situation being able to say that it's innacurately depicted; however that's not the key theme of the film's narrative, which is a contemporary papal election. By contrast the film "The Two Popes" does deserve the historically-inaccurate tag, because it depicts a meeting between two real-life people which definitely never happened and is purely the imagination of the playwright who asked himself "what if?" In that case, I do wish that the film would preface itself by making it clear that it is purely a flight of fancy in order to explore ideas around faith, theology and succession because I'm sure a lot of people really do believe that Francis did have private conversations with Benedikt and received his endorsement.
Roma? The Irishman? The Two Popes? Marriage Story? Mank? Beasts of No Nation? Power of the Dog? Tick Tick Boom?
Can't really take a comment seriously that puts Apple's film output over this. Besides Coda has Apple produced or even just distributed anything of comparable quality?
Netflix is musty, as someone said to me. After overthinking, musty indeed is the best term for most of Netflix.
Last movie I saw and liked at Netflix was The two popes. Netflix doesn't carry top series like
- Exit https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9612102/
- Le bureau des légendes https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4063800/
- Okkupert EDIT was/is available https://www.netflix.com/title/80092654
In the US & Canada Netflix has Babylon Berlin https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4378376/ but IMHO it is not up to above three.
Looking forward to be able to watch hbo-europe.com documentaries like
- The Other Side of Everything https://www.othersideofeverything.com/
- Lessons of Love https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM-wAlSFHZQ