THE TWO POPES (2019) FILM REVIEW

***

12A, 126 Mins

Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce spice up this cup of Papal froth.

If you're looking for a scathing deconstruction of organized religion, 'The Two Popes' (2019) won't give you it. Despite the presence of the film-maker behind the gritty flavella-inflected streets of 'City of God' (2002) in the director's chair, this is a frothy buddy comedy that just happens to have one of the most epochal periods in Catholicism's history as its backdrop. It has little to say about the ongoing battle between traditionalism and progressivism in the Vatican nor about the church's waning influence in an increasingly Atheist world.

The key to enjoying Director Fernando Meirelles's film is to cast aside any po-faced pretensions and focus on career-best performances from two of Britain's best thespians for whom both OSCARS are surely due. Anthony Hopkins chews up the scenery with lip-licking panache as the ultra-conservative Pope Benedict XVI - his Germanic laugh being a highlight. Of course, he would never be able to lift such a film alone if it weren't for the sinewy magnificence of Jonathan Pryce who is barnstormingly brilliant as the unorthodox Argentinian Cardinal Bergoglio (now known as Pope Francis).

The film's strengths largely stem from the charming interplay between the titular two popes who play off each other with a Shakespearean tragicomic undercurrent of ageing individuals struggling to stay afloat in a digitally de-aging world. Anthony McCarten's screenplay succeeds in making lengthy, ponderous discussions about theology digestible for a mainstream audience through crackles of light-hearted laughs that take centre stage in a hillarious scene of the popes snuggled up around the telly, beer in hand, cheering at the World Cup.

Where it missteps are in moments the film attempts to delve deeper than its soft surface. Flashbacks to the cardinals's early lives feel forced and unweildy while the film barely scratches its shiny sheen when treading upon the sex abuse scandals that lurk behind the curtains of this seemingly orderly institution. 

Like I said, though, this is not a film to be taken "seriously" at face value; rather one which requires you to simply sit back and sip the froth off the top of its very weak Cappucino. The theatricality of its performers is likely to elevate this to higher awards attention than it might receive otherwise, but Hopkins and Pryce have banterous chemistry not even found in the most boisterous good cop/bad cop movies!

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