The Two Popes story in shaky hands

A moving true story of an unlikely bond is largely ruined by the director’s use of queasy-cam.

Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedic and Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Bergoglio in The Two Popes. Picture: Netflix via AP

British screenwriter Anthony McCarten specialises in writing about real-life characters; he wrote The Theory of Everything (Stephen Hawking), Darkest Hour (Winston Churchill) and Bohemian Rhapsody (Freddie Mercury), and the films made from these screenplays were all impressive. It’s a maxim in the film business that if the screenplay is good and the casting is right, the director can do no wrong. McCarten’s latest screenplay once again explores real characters and a real-life drama, and the casting could not be better. In The Two Popes Anthony Hopkins plays Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, while Jonathan Pryce plays the current Pope, Francis, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and both are excellent.

Their story is an intriguing one. Ratzinger, a conservative from Germany, is elected to the papacy in 2005 on the death of the Polish pope, John Paul II; Bergoglio, from Buenos Aires, is the distant runner-up. Seven years later Bergoglio seeks to resign as Cardinal and is summoned to Rome to meet the Pope at his summer palace, Castel Gandolfo, where he receives the shocking news that Benedict intends to resign and sees Bergoglio as his successor.

Given this dramatic situation, McCarten uses his writing skills to imagine what the two men had to say to one another. Both had experienced traumatic pasts; Ratzinger in Nazi Germany and Bergoglio in Argentina in the 1970s during the period following the military coup when many leftists, including priests, disappeared. Ratzinger is a solitary man who dines alone, conducts himself in an extremely formal manner, and whose only form of relaxation seems to be watching the German TV show about a police dog, Kommisar Rex.

“Life was easier when everyone spoke Latin,” he complains at one point. Bergoglio, on the other hand, is a liberal, a man of the people who treats everyone, including the Pope’s servants, as equals, who takes public transport, eats pizzas, whose taste in music runs to ABBA and who explains that, in Argentina, dancing the tango and supporting the local soccer team are both compulsory. He also has a dry sense of humour: “How does an Argentinian kill himself? He climbs to the top of his ego and jumps off.”

The men have little in common (“I don’t agree with anything you say,” Ratzinger tells Bergoglio) and yet, over the course of a couple of days, a bond grows between them that is beautiful to behold. That’s the core of the drama and of McCarten’s screenplay – and the result is that, even for non-Catholics, the interaction between these two devout men provides a moving drama.

But, and it’s a big “but”, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles seems at times to be doing his best to wreck everything. Meirelles is a believer in the hand-held camera and his ugly visual style ruined – for me – his earlier films, City of God and The Constant Gardener. He does it again inThe Two Popes: whenever there’s a dramatic confrontation between the two men, Meirelles has his cameraman – Cesar Charlone – move uncomfortably close to the faces of the actors and wobble around as if he’s having difficulty holding his equipment, let alone keeping it steady. Is this dramatically useful? Not at all.

It’s a great shame because so much of the film is impressive – the screenplay, the actors, the magnificent sets (a key scene unfolds in a studio-constructed Sistine Chapel), the lucid flashbacks into Argentina’s sorry past; all these elements are exhilarating, but they’re undercut by the director’s addition to queasy-cam.

The Two Popes (M)

Limited cinema release prior to Netflix screening

★★★

This charming con-man

Based on a novel by Nicholas Searle, The Good Liar is a literate and for the most part enjoyable showcase for two wonderful British actors – Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen. Set in London in 2009, the film begins as these two senior citizens, Roy Courtnay and Betty McLeish, both widowed, are using a dating service (“A system for mismatching the delusional with the hopeless,” Roy sarcastically notes). Nevertheless, they arrange for a blind date at a smart restaurant, though neither gives their real name, at least at first.

The date goes well, but when Betty offers Roy a lift in her car afterwards, he declines, saying he can easily take the train. After she’s driven off, he hails a taxi and is taken to a club for men where strippers entertain. There he meets a bunch of other men, including Vincent (Jim Carter); they’re plotting some kind of financial scam involving Russians. Roy, it immediately becomes clear, is a con-man. That’s the set-up and the audience is in on the joke. Betty is clearly going to be Roy’s next target; she’s comfortably well off and she’s obviously lonely. And Roy is so charming, so English.

Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen in The Good Liar.

American director Bill Condon, whose CV covers a wide range of subjects from Gods and Monsters (also with McKellen) to the recent Beauty and the Beast, handles the intriguing elements of the plot with assured confidence, and with actors like these in top form there’s never a dull moment, even when the film delves into flashbacks set in the distant past.

The problem lies in the basic material: it’s all a bit predictable. Most viewers will surely be several steps ahead in this drama of betrayal and deceit but still there’s a great deal to enjoy as the dense plotting works itself out. Mirren and McKellen are clearly enjoying themselves hugely and have a few smart lines to deliver (“It’s like being smothered in beige,” complains Roy about living with Betty – and we can see what he means). There are also a few moments that provide mild shocks, such as an unexpected murder that takes place on the platform of an underground station.

The Good Liar (MA15+)

National release

★★★½

Doomed fugitive

Every element of the classic 1940s Hollywood film noir is to be found in Chinese director Diao Yinan’s thriller, Wild Goose Lake. The central character is a doomed fugitive hunted by both the police and his criminal associates. There’s a femme fatale who may, or may not, be trusted. There are flashbacks, chases and gun battles in rain-soaked back alleys, cigarettes are lit with old-fashioned lighters, and there are shadows galore. Visually, the film, set in the city of Wuhan, is most impressive.

The unfortunate protagonist is Zhou (Hu Ge), who, in an atmospheric opening scene that takes place at night under an archway in torrential rain, encounters Liu (Gwei Lun Mei), who wears a striking red dress and asks for a cigarette. Zhou was expecting his wife, but Liu has been sent instead by gang boss Huahua (Qi Dao).

Flashback to two days earlier. Just out of prison, Zhou checks in to a seedy hotel that serves as a headquarters for small-time thieves who are being given a lesson in how to steal motorbikes. There’s a dispute over territory that turns violent and during the affray Zhou accidentally shoots a cop. He’s now a wanted man.

The plot is simple enough, though it’s not always easy to work out which are the cops and which are the crooks, since they all seem to dress and behave alike. Certainly the film paints a bleak image of the underbelly of urban China, where crimes of all sorts flourish and where the police are as violent as the villains. Liu, it seems, is a prostitute (euphemistically called a “bathing beauty”) whose beat is the shore of the lake that gives the film its title. The sex in the film is as rough as the violence and the unfortunate Zhou cops many a beating and worse in the course of this beautifully made movie. Watch out for the scene with the umbrella!

Wild Goose Lake (Nan fang che zhan de ju hui) (ma15+)

Limited release

★★★½