The Two Popes stars Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce — that’s two reasons to buy a ticket, right there — as Pope Benedict XVI and his successor Pope Francis I, and it is wildly entertaining, so now you have a third reason too. True, it does, as others have noted, shy away from directly tackling the most difficult questions currently facing the church. But is that really the film you want to see? Rather than this affectionate and literate bromance that does, in fact, nudge us towards the bigger picture, but slyly? Also, it is brilliantly comic. Pope Benedict, for instance, doesn’t get jokes but does try to tell one, which no one else gets. ‘It’s a German joke, so it doesn’t have to be funny,’ he then explains. I laughed my head off. Unquestionably, it is the most papal fun I’ve had in years.
The Two Popes is directed by Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener, City of God) and written by Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Theory of Everything), based on his own stage play of 2017.
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