Two Popes, two Soldiers, two films to make a point of seeing

Historically, having two popes at the same time has tended to be a matter of conflict and bitterness. It happened between 1378 and 1417, when two men – and from 1410 three – all claimed to be the legitimate Pope and excommunicated the others.

So it’s curious to be living in a period in which there are, once more, two Popes at the same time. On this occasion, there is little bitterness and no conflict.

Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Bergoglio, Anthony Hopkins as Benedict XVI

Perhaps Netflix felt that it was in the keeping of the spirit of Christmas to release its film The Two Popes in the run up to that great Christian festival. It is based around the moment in 2013 when the then Pope Benedict XVI is replaced, although still alive, by Pope Francis. It wasn’t the first time a Pope had resigned but it was the first in six centuries.

The film starts earlier, with Cardinal Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, deciding to travel to visit Pope Benedict in Rome to press his resignation as Archbishop of Buenos Aires. Strangely, he has no sooner bought his air ticket than Begoglio receives a summons from Benedict to come and see him. This neatly sets an atmosphere in which we feel that forces beyond the mere will of man are at work.

The key sequence of the film is a series of discussions between the two men in which they confront their views on the nature and role of the Catholic Church. Do you know the comedy series Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister? If not, you should watch an episode or two (if you only see one, make it A Victory for Democracy, from season 1 of Yes, Prime Minister). The curious aspect of the series is that they are principally concerned with the relationship between three middle-aged, white men; there is no sex and no violence; but they produce some of the funniest and most effective TV comedy I have ever seen.

There is considerably less comedy in The Two Popes (though it has some wonderful funny moments). Like Yes, Prime Minister, however, it focuses on old, white men, brilliantly played by two outstanding Welsh actors, Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, who swap reflections on themselves and their lives in a strangely gripping piece of cinema.

At the core is whether Benedict even has the right to step down, and whether Bergoglio can take over. The problem with Bergoglio is that he played a most unclear role in the dirty war in Argentina, when a military dictatorship was ruthlessly cracking down on its opponents. Torture and assassination were among its weapons of choice, and in failing to stand by two priests, Bergoglio may even have been complicit in their mistreatment. He repeatedly presents himself as a sinner, and he is chiefly thinking of this murky period in his past. But does that sin rule him out from becoming Pope or, on the contrary, make him all the more qualified to lead a Church whose main purpose is to deal with men and their sins?

It’s a fascinating film using a beautifully light touch to deal with some of the deepest questions that confront humanity.

If you have the time, it would also be worth reading the tie-in book for the film. Also called The Two Popes, it is by Anthony McCarten who wrote the film’s screenplay. It gives a more factual account of the events behind the film, making it clear, for instance, that the great conversation between the two central characters, vital for the drama of the film and truthfully conveying the conflicts between them and also within them, never actually happened.

Geroge MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman set out on their epic mission

Another great film recently released is 1917. It is brilliantly directed by Sam Mendes and based at least in part on a fragment he heard from his grandfather. It tells the story of two young soldiers given a challenging assignment in the British sector of the First World War Western Front, to carry a message across territory recently vacated by German forces (or possibly not) to a unit which, without it, might launch an assault that would lead to its destruction in a carefully prepared German trap.

Sam Mendes uses long takes, giving the impression that the film has been shot in a single take, to drive the action forward with sustained intensity. It recounts just twenty-four hours of time. That’s the ‘unity of time’ of classical theatre, and it has a powerful focusing effect on the action. That is accentuated by the unrelenting concentration on the messengers, excellently played by George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman, in their race against the clock.

It isn’t by any means a standard First World War film. There is violence, but it is limited and certainly not gratuitous. Much of the action takes place outside the trenches, and even when inside, it is mostly travelling along them, the journey being the central action of the film as a whole. Above all, it is a classic epic, of a mission undertaken against terrible obstacles. As well as having many powerfully poignant moments, it is breathlessly compelling from beginning to end.

Two fine films. And one fine book. All worth the time they take.

Not good for the Pope. Not good for Britain either

One thought can easily conjure up unrelated memories, can’t it?

I was reading about the present Pope the other day, and it brought to mind memories of the Falklands War. Or perhaps I should say Conflict, since war was never declared. And perhaps I should say Conflict over the Malvinas, to give the Spanish name for those islands, since that’s what the Argentinians call them.

What’s the link to Pope Francis? The Conflict brought to an end the military dictatorship in Argentina. That, incidentally, is why I always think the Argentinians won, even if they didn’t keep the islands: they got rid of one of the bloodiest and most brutal dictatorships in their troubled history, while we were stuck with Thatcher for another seven years, followed by further Tory government under John Major for another five after that.

It wasn’t just the supposed ‘victory’ in the Falklands that kept Thatcher in power and gave her a landslide election win the following year. She was helped by Labour having a brainstorm and going into that campaign led by the hard left, which played right into her hands. Sound familiar? Yes, just because we made that mistake 36 years ago doesn’t mean we’d learn from it and avoid it this year.

Francis, then Jorge Bergoglio and head of the Jesuit order in Argentina, lived through the dictatorship and its “dirty war”. Indeed, the darkest era in his past is that he may have contributed to two priests being tortured by the regime.

Esther Ballestrino
A significant influence on Pope Francis

A woman who played a major role in Bergoglio’s development was Esther Ballestrino. She headed the lab where he worked when he was still a chemist and hadn’t decided to become a priest. In 1977, her son-in-law and her pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter were abducted and tortured by the regime. In the absence of any news of them, Ballestrino joined with other women in founding the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ who would gather every week, demanding information, outside the presidential palace on that square in Buenos Aires.

Eventually, her daughter was released. But Ballestrino kept turning out with the other protestors. Unfortunately, the group was inflltrated by a man called Alfredo Astiz, from Naval Intelligence, nicknamed the ‘blond angel of death’. When the group published an advertisement listing the names of the ‘disappeared’ – the people abducted and about whose destiny no information was available – Astiz arranged for five women, including Ballestrino, to be arrested. They were tortured and eventually loaded, heavily drugged, onto a ‘death flight’: a plane that took them out to sea where they were dropped, hands and feet bound, out of the back of the aircraft.

So Esther Ballestrino died, one of the great sorrows in Pope Francis’s life.

And what memory did this conjure up in me?

I was conflicted over the Falklands War – conflicted over the Conflict. It strikes me as ridiculous that a group of islands off the coast of Argentina are possessions of a country, Britain, nearly 13,000 kilometres away. On the other hand, I loathed the Argentinian junta and deeply disliked the way they decided they could use military force to solve a territorial dispute. Above all, I disliked their obvious contempt for the views of the local population.

The use of military force and the trampling of the rights of the local inhabitants? It felt far too much like what the Israeli government does to Palestinians.

In any case, I can only be pleased with the way things worked out for Argentina, giving them a far more important victory than anything on the battlefield could have achieved: it freed them from a particularly nasty regime.

At the time, however, I remember being regularly sickened by the news. There was a day when I arrived in London from the suburb where I lived at the time, and caught sight of a startling headline in the local paper, the Evening Standard. The Argentinian cruiser Belgrano had been sunk by a British submarine, leading to the deaths of several hundred young conscripts. My stomach churned over that massacre, and even more over the gleeful celebration right-wing papers engaged in over it.

The Sun delighting in the deaths of conscript sailors

Then there was the recapture by British troops of the island of South Georgia. They took the surrender of the Argentinian garrison there. It was commanded by – Lieutenant Commander Alberto Astiz. Yes. The blond angel of death.

Both Sweden and France wanted to question him for the murder of some of their nationals. But the Thatcher government, pleading the Geneva Convention, had him questioned by a British policeman and, when Astiz refused to answer any questions, decided to release him and send him home.

So a torturer and murderer was treated with kid gloves, while the young conscripts on the Belgrano were sent to their deaths with callous indifference.

Alfredo Astiz, torturer, murderer, released by Thatcher

Funny to be reminded of all that by a book talking about Pope Francis. Funny but no fun. To me, that act of the Thatcher government ought to be remembered in perpetuity as a moment of glaring shame in the history of Britain.

Astiz was at last sentenced to life in prison in 2011. By the Argentines. Who again emerge from this sorry story, as they did from the war, with more honour than a deeply flawed Britain.