Unquestioning portrait of a pope
In the midst of cinema’s big-budget blowout season, Wim Wenders has surfaced with a blockbusting religious documentary: the Thought for the Day equivalent of Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Pope Francis: A Man of His Word finds the German filmmaker operating in portrait mode, with this rich, personal-feeling study of the man formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and the current head of the Roman Catholic Church. As Wenders notes early on, Francis is an outlier in many respects: the first pope from the Americas, the first from the southern hemisphere, and the first to take the name of the 13th-century saint of Assisi, known for his humility before nature and embrace of the poor and outcast. Through behind-the-scenes footage, historical reconstructions and engaging face-to-face interviews, Wenders builds his argument that Francis I is the ideal pope for our times.
That may not be a shock conclusion for a film made with the full cooperation of the Vatican itself, and Wenders’s project feels – not compromised, exactly, but certainly limited by its brief. No tricky questions are posed – few at all, in fact – which means Francis’s remarks that do require some unpacking tend to be left in the box. More often than not, that doesn’t apply: one thing Wenders’s extensive footage proves is that Francis is an extraordinarily gifted speaker. But when the reverential approach fails, as it occasionally does, the whole film momentarily trips over its cassock. At one point, Francis appears to draw a confusing equivalence between fourth-wave feminism and men’s rights activists, and the thought is left hanging in the air unexplained, like a UFO hovering in the back of the shot.
Perhaps surprisingly, little interest is shown in Francis’s life in Argentina. Historical perspective comes instead from the life of St Francis, as narrated by Wenders and illustrated by black and white Dreyer-lite reconstructions of bald men in robes. These can feel silly, but they do help clarify Wenders’s persuasive central point: that the various notable aspects of Francis’s approach to his office, such as championing of refugees and concern for the environment, are all grounded in a coherent theology that has relevance and worth. Whether you buy into it or not, the film does feel like a tangible close encounter with holiness.