Two Popes. One dangerous lie
The film The Two Popes, starring Anthony hopkins as the mordantly conservative Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce as his slippery liberal successor Pope Francis, is a joy. I can recommend it as a drama. It is witty, fast-moving, slickly filmed and hopkins is marvellous to watch. Alas, it is yet another example of fiction posing as fact. even the Sistine Chapel shown in the movie is a brilliant fake.
All this – including the depictions of the two old priests sharing pizza together or bonding with beer in front of a Germany-Argentina World Cup game on the Papal TV – is harmless.
But the heart of the plot – a claim that the hardline Benedict actually chose the flexible Francis as his successor, and that they have become friends since the old conservative’s retirement – is a nonsense.
This matters. The film is having a moderate success in cinemas and will soon be streamed on Netflix. And I guarantee that soon after that you will be meeting lots of people who will tell you with absolute confidence that the two Popes are secretly great friends, and that ‘everybody knows’ this. If you make dramas about real living people, they must be true. Portraying fiction as reality destroys the very idea of truth.