I Know He’s Here, But He Doesn’t Laugh
How do you make God laugh? Make a plan.
So goes the old Yiddish proverb that’s been a notable source of inspiration for everyone from Ben Gibbard to Joseph Fiennes to Public Enemy. But what if your job—a higher calling that places you at the head of His church, in charge of all decisions and the safeguarding of it from, as you see it, circling intruders—is quite literally to make his plans? To lay down the very manual for how we’re supposed to talk to God? To talk to Him, and to listen? And what if God doesn’t actually find that very funny at all?
Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) expresses this very malaise midway through The Two Popes, director Fernando Meirelles’ lively imagining of a hypothetical meeting between a blistering Benedict and the future Pope Francis, then just an avuncular cardinal named Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce). As the two men sit inside the Palace of Castel Gandolfo, the Holy Father’s summer residence, after a day of disagreement, Benedict turns introspective. We don’t know it yet, but he’s been having second thoughts about his turn as the successor to St. Peter. “I think perhaps I need a spiritual hearing aid,” he shares. The mood lightens. There’s music. Even a joke. Then Benedict reveals a hidden loneliness from the top of one of the world’s foremost positions of power: “I know He’s here, but He doesn’t laugh. At least I don’t hear him laughing.” He’s been planning, too. And yet, silence.
Throughout the film, the pair of popes duel over dogma, bond over The Beatles, and ultimately absolve each other’s sins in the holiest of chapels in the Vatican. Call it their Lost Weekend, though instead of boozily heckling the Smothers Brothers, the two popes say grace over pizza and orange Fanta. Benedict gradually learns to open himself up, while Bergoglio reluctantly takes up the call to lead the flock in the wake of Benedict’s eventual resignation. Of course, this meeting never happened—not this way, anyway. But its inherent fiction allows writer Anthony McCarten to pull a minor miracle: the conservative Benedict, mockingly called a Nazi for his childhood association in Germany, is turned human (and, thanks to the intimidating charm of Hopkins, even humorous), while the warmth and fallibility of Pryce’s Francis becomes just as crucial to his personage as his status as a progressive symbol.
More than all that, though, The Two Popes shines through its idiosyncrasies. They’re what I use to sell people on a film about the two most powerful men—both white, both ancient—in a historically corrupt organization whose 21st century hasn’t gone much better than the ones preceding it. To its detriment, The Two Popes doesn’t dive into the ongoing, abominable sex-abuse scandals that continue to haunt and mar the Catholic church. (They’re brought up, opaquely, then shuffled off just as quickly.) But for better or worse, it’s not that kind of film. It doesn’t have answers for the issues plaguing (and caused by) massive institutions. It’s about humanity—and its best moments are also its weirdest.
Early in the film, shortly after Bergoglio arrives at Benedict’s summer home, they have it out in the garden, though it’s more a chance for Benedict to air his grievances than for Bergoglio to enact any meaning discussion. He’s liberal. He’s publicly commented on the failings of the church. And even as he gently defends himself, there’s an unruly chaos to the scene, thanks to its sound design. Buzzing insects, chirping birds, and ambient nature sounds surround the two, echoing their argument. It’s nowhere near as claustrophobic as what the Safdie Brothers do in Uncut Gems, but it’s in the same toolkit. “I ask you, are you sure you still wish to be a priest?” Benedict croaks at the man he sees as a rival. The insects wail behind him.
Just a scene before that, the popes sit at a richly decorated table in the garden. Benedict gets a bug in his eye—a pesky little beast to him—and he bats at it. The symbolism is a little flagrant for me: Bergoglio will eventually take the name Francis, the patron saint of animals and nature, as he enters his own papacy. But the moment is still a nice preamble to the sheer natural tumult that follows. Bergoglio, the future Francis, had led Benedict to that portion of the garden, citing its shade. Benedict is unfamiliar with that particular plot, even though it’s his residence. You see the moves and motivations here, how Bergoglio looks and listens and lets the world in while Benedict crows in an insular realm.
Later, after taking dinner separately, both holy men have cooled off. They’ve found at least some common ground after realizing neither can have coffee too late in the day, lest they risk sleep disruption. After the argument (and after taking their meals separately), they find time to sit together in the palazzo living room. Benedict even lets Bergoglio in on one of his favorite pastimes: an Austrian show about a crime-fighting dog called Kommissar Rex. The clip only lasts a few moments, and it feels like it’s being beamed in from another movie. But it accomplishes two things. First, it allows Benedict to probe into himself. “You know, they liken me to a dog,” he admits. “‘God’s Rottweiler.’ That is their nickname for me.”
Kommissar Rex also redoubles the film’s ample template for silliness, something the two popes also dig into at the piano bench. (“Small pleasures are important,” Bergoglio says after they’ve seat themselves at the keys.) Benedict plays a tune from his youth, revealing the man he was before he put on the vestments. Hopkins’ joy here is crucial, in complete contrast to how hard and despotic he plays Benedict in the garden. He offers Bergoglio wine. They take turns telling stories. Bergoglio brings up “Eleanor Rigby,” a song Benedict doesn’t know—but he knows “Yellow Submarine,” enough that it makes his face crack into an unwitting smile.
Popes can play piano. Popes can listen to Yellow Submarine. Popes don’t even necessarily have to wear those fancy little red shoes, Francis proves later on. The inherent pageantry of the papacy is further chiseled at just before the film’s climax in the Papal Room of Tears at the Vatican, when the two pals munch on some Italian street pizza. Hopkins gets a close-up so richly detailed as he shoves a slice into his mouth, crunching its brittle crust at borderline ASMR levels. They’ve said grace; they’ve all but transubstantiated the pizza and Fanta. It’s time to chow the hell down, and chow they do. The camera has never before rendered pizza so sacrosanct.
But how do you market an often absurd buddy flick about two popes, finding time to fold in these wonderful idiosyncrasies that give an otherwise dour subject its colorful vibrations? You give it stakes. Its trailer is built around one evocative moment where Benedict screams the word “silence!” with maximum Oscar drama, seemingly at Bergoglio, as if he’s commanding him. In the film, though, that moment reveals something quite different: Benedict as not a tyrant but a lost and ruminative man. He explains his reasons for wanting to abdicate the papacy again and again to Bergoglio, who continues to challenge him to remain steadfast and trust in the Lord. But Benedict is desperate.
“Every reason I give you is not enough, so let me tell you again,” he tells his new friend. “I can no longer sit in the chair of St. Peter. I cannot feel the presence of God. I do not hear his voice, do you understand me? I believe in God! I pray to God! Silence!” The shot lingers in the quiet for a few moments, enough to sit with the outburst and the gravity of the pope’s admission. He’s not telling Bergoglio to be quiet. He’s expressing his exasperation at how God has seemingly fled his own mind. “I cannot play this role anymore,” he finally resumes, like a balloon bleeding air.
“The hardest thing is to listen, to hear His voice,” Benedict admits to Bergoglio earlier, back at the palazzo. Yet not 10 minutes later, they’re surrounded by His voice, in music. In prewar Berlin tunes Benedict bangs out on the piano. In the arch Thelonious Monk videos they silently take in together. In talking about The Beatles. “Yellow Submarine? That’s silly. That’s very funny,” Benedict half-chuckles after Bergoglio brings up the album.
Man plans, and God laughs. But we can laugh first. We laugh, and our laughter heals. We watch trashy television and slug pinot noir and mush congealed cheese bread down our throats, and it’s all so normal. And everything is so silly all the time. What’s not to laugh at?
