Pope Francis: A Man of His Word

Year of release: 2018.     Directed by Wim Wenders.

A narrative voice over (from director Wim Wenders) laments the state of the world: increasing numbers of people are starving and homeless, pollution continues to cause irreversible damage to the environment, injustices abound over the entire face of the globe. The direness of these proclamations is contrasted with a beautiful long distance shot of an Italian city, which one might assume is Rome. However, it is Assisi, the home of St. Francis, from whom our current pontiff took his name.

Wenders continues, praising the revolutionary way St. Francis confronted the injustices of his day. By adopting a life of extreme poverty and prayer he did not fight against the corruption of wealth and power, but instead led a peaceful rebellion, witnessing to the joy that comes from embracing poverty and seeing Christ in all of creation.

Brief interludes performed by a trio of actors playing St. Francis and two of his followers are scattered throughout the film, and they depict that joy and simplicity, which is reinforced by Wenders’ decision to film the interludes in a grainy, old school black and white full frame. Among other incidents from the life of St. Francis, Wenders focuses on St. Francis composing his Canticle to the Sun and meeting with the Egyptian Sultan during the Crusades to ask for peace, arguing these are some of the ways St. Francis fulfilled Christ’s command from the crucifix to “rebuild my Church.”

After the first interlude, Wenders cuts to a 1999 address from Bishop Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, in which Bergoglio calls for charity and solidarity among all Christians, which Wenders is clearly stating to be not dissimilar from St. Francis’ way of life. Thus, when the next scene shows Bergoglio becoming Pope and choosing the name Francis, the remainder of the film becomes a series of examples of the various countercultural ways that Pope Francis lives out the Gospel in his personal life, like his namesake did eight hundred years ago.

The first half of the film has a natural flow from one event to another, for which Wenders should be commended. We see Pope Francis give interviews to children, to the camera, to crowds, and to reporters calling for us all to be less attached to possessions, decrying the rampant consumerism that engulfs the world, and affirming the dignity of a work, which is something we are all called to do. A tracking shot through a parade concludes this half of the film with a touching exchange between the pope and a nun.

The second half of the film tackles more topics, sometimes jumping around to different ones in ways that don’t always flow. However, Wenders spends enough time focusing on Francis’ own words that we can see his beliefs and his explanations for how all these issues are interrelated in a sort of seamless garment: care of the environment, welcoming of refugees, defense of the innocent, condemning unhealthy consumerism – failing any one betrays a worldview which devalues the poorest and most vulnerable.

An extended segment focuses on the plight of refugees and immigrants around the world. The pope’s call to recognize refugees as the image of Christ comes as welcome rebuttal to the current USA administration’s assault upon immigrants, especially for any Catholics who are physically ill from watching supposed fellow believers defend such monstrosities. Wenders clearly intends for Francis’ words to be taken this way, not only from the location of the refugees he films, but also when he follows this part a few minutes later with Francis’ 2015 address to a joint session of Congress, focusing on his condemnation of the plunder of the environment and calling for an end to the production and sale of weapons.

In addition to the top-notch production values, Wenders greatest strength is his focus on Pope Francis and Francis’ own words, clearly portraying him as a man who lives and leads by example. It’s a bit of a pity Wenders did not include Francis’ recent apology for his callous response to the Chilean abuse scandal or any other example of the pope repenting and seeking forgiveness for his shortcomings, but in fairness to Wenders, that may have happened after post-production concluded, and his focus is on the similarities between the two Francises, and the ways they were both committed to living the Gospel.

A final flourish merges the St. Francis of Assisi timeline with today in a particularly impressive and touching way, concluding a parallel between two teachers of the Church, almost a millennium apart, who were both men of their word.

 

Personal recommendation: A-

Elephant

Year of release: 2003              Directed by Gus Van Sant.     Starring John Robinson, Elias McConnell, Alex Frost, and Eric Deulen.

It is certainly not uncommon for films to age poorly. What seemed groundbreaking or provocative at one time appears tacky, contrived, or even offensive ten, twenty, or thirty years later. However, Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, which won the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003, is a uniquely appalling example of a film that has aged so poorly that watching it one has to frequently remind themself that cultural awareness now is not what it was a decade and a half ago.

I will readily admit that recent events do not help this movie age, but Elephant is still one of the most offensive trainwrecks I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. Literally, the only good thing about it is that it is a relatively short 80 minutes, even if it doesn’t always feel that way when watching it.

A story of a fictitious school shooting, inspired by details of the Columbine massacre, the film approaches the subject by using the multiple storyline technique, showing the same interval of time leading up to the school shooting from the perspective of various students. Pointless tracking shots randomly follow students from several high school cliques, except never long enough that the students become anything other than stereotypes. At the end of one of the segments, there is a brief shot of two kids carrying guns who tell one of the kids to get away from the school.

I watched this film cold, completely unaware of anything related to the storyline, but at that point I was able to figure out where it was going, and I spent the remainder of the film hoping I was going to be wrong, until I wasn’t. The lack of personality of all the students meant that the film only viewed them as statistics, so there was nothing tragic in the way it portrayed their inevitable loss of life. However, more problematically, since the film used the Rashomon technique of replaying the same time frame from different perspectives, it inevitably meant that the first moment of release and resolution would be when those different threads came together. That moment by default was the school massacre.

I am sure the filmmakers intended to build to the massacre and have it be the apex of the horror; however, because of the style of filming, it ended up being one of the most callous and offensive uses of teenage death I have ever seen in a film.

Finally, the portrayal of the two shooters is even more problematic. The film teases at motivations for them: they play violent video games, they’re secretly gay and bullied, inviting the viewer to speculate whatever motivation s/he wants. Considering the way such excuses have recently been used to blame victims of school shootings while subsequently implying that bullied or outcast kids are secretly psychopaths, the suggestion here is outrageous regardless of when this film was made.

As to the meaning of the title, it could either refer to the expression “the elephant in the room” or the story of six blind men who each feel a different part of an elephant and all conclude it is something completely different. The “elephant in the room” would presumably refer to the outcast kids and the impending shooting which no one expected, but based on the film’s presentation, there would be no reason to. Since there are so many different storylines covering different points of view, those could suggest the second interpretation of various fragments of reality coming together to reveal an horrific whole.

Elephant is the sort of arty film that invites its viewers to draw any conclusion they want, whether that is in regards to the meaning of the title or why the school shooting happened. In approaching the tragic subject matter in such a way, it dulls the horror and only seems interested in eliciting a response of “fascinating” to a school shooting, because it’s too pretentious to actually care about its characters or the tragedy other than for exploitation.

 

Personal recommendation: F