Posted on 08/24/2005 7:58:08 AM PDT by Teófilo
Folks, every now and then something comes out from TV that's a plesant surprise.This time is a movie recently broadcast on the Hallmark channel, entitled A Man Who Became Pope: The Heroic True Story of John Paul II. I recorded it and watched it again to catch some details. Here's my review:
The movie is well done, true to life in terms of sets and costumes. This is no amateur production. The principal actors themselves are Polish: Piotr Adamczyk played Karol Wojtyla and Malgorzata Bela played leading lady, a platonic love never consumated.
Adamczyk plays a convincing Wojtyla, reacting with profound emotions and absorption to every evil he sees. This is consontant with Wojtyla's phenomenological leanings. He was able to capture the late Pope's penetrating gaze and ample smile.
Main bad guys: Matt Craven, who played Hans Frank, Poland's Nazi governor and Hristo Shopov, whose name has been grievously omitted from the Cast Biographies and the Media Kit available from the distributor's website. We all know Shopov: he played Pontius Pilate in the Passion of the Christ. The guy has a nack to play evil dudes. In this movie, he played a Polish Communist apparatchik who tries to capture Wojtyla in a fumble that would justify his arrest, but can't.
Supporting cast: Raoul Bova played Father Thomasz Zaleski, pastor of Wawel Cathedral in Cracow and a mentor of young Karol. Zaleski lost his life at the whim of Governor Hans Frank. Ennio Fantasthichini played Nowak, a mine worker Wojtyla befriended while working at the Solway quarry who became a lifelong friend and mentor of sorts. There are more, but these are the ones I have the most information for the moment. I want to say that no secondary character was wasted in this movie; all of them contributed actively to the setting, to the environment, and to the pathos of the movie.
The script: In my opinion, perhaps the one thing that could have been improved. Sometimes the character appear to be delivering one-liners that sort of "cruise" past the other. In his more pedagogic moments, Wojtyla seems to be delivering straight quotes from the Pope's own works: Love and Responsibility and the Acting Person. Adamski's delivery of these lines is magisterial and saves the day. He was able to integrate seamlessly them into a normal dialogue.
If the late Pope was like this, no wonder he is so beloved!
Anyway...Hallmark is having encore presentations this coming Saturday August 27 at 7pm. Don't miss it. I give it 4 jalapeños out of 5.
- Get more information and excellent high resolution pictures here.
Catholic PING!!
Thanks for update. . .a friend of mine caught it first time around and loved it. . .was sooo impressed; glad to see there will be an encore.
This movie was awesome, simply superb. Fr. Zaleski was definitely a man not afraid to stand up to evil! Anyone who can watch the movie and not get a tear in their eye from time to time isn't human, IMO.
I might watch it again this weekend!
Sorry, but I hated it. Cardboard characters (several surely invented out of thin air), a contrived whiff of a romantic interest to sex up the plot, and cartoon bad guys. I went back to it several repetedly as it aired to see if it'd improve, but was unable to keep watching more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time. A professional production, but irredeemably shallow IMHO.
It was excellent, watched it twice and can't wait to buy it.
The cast was perfect.
Wow. I suppose it can be seen that way too. :-(
Let's lower our expectations a bit and understand that this is not a documentary, but a docu-drama. This is theater, an interpretation of Pope Wojtyla's life and not a rigurous biography.
Perhaps if you approach it that way you may learn to enjoy it.
-Theo
Compared to a lot of the crap you see on TV these days, it was a refreshing change of pace...but you can't please everyone, as we have seen.
| TV movie on Pope John Paul II to air again this weekend New York, Aug. 24, 2005 (CNA) - By popular demand, the heroic, true story of Pope John Paul II returns to television. The four-hour movie, “A Man Who Became Pope,” will air again on the Hallmark Channel Aug. 27, at 7 p.m. (ET). The Aug. 15th U.S. premiere of the film set a weeknight audience record for the cable channel. Filmed on location in Krakow, Poland, and in the Vatican City, the film features an international cast, including Piotr Adamczyk as Karol Wojtyla and Raul Bova as Fr. Tomasz Zaleski, Karol’s close childhood friend and a martyr to the Nazis. Giacomo Battiato directed the film and it was produced by Pietro Valsecchi. “A Man Who Became Pope” was warmly received when screened at the Vatican on May 19. “The film presents scenes and episodes that, in their severity, awaken in the viewers an instinctive ‘turning away’ in horror and stimulates them to consider the abyss of iniquity that can be hidden in the human soul,” said Pope Benedict XVI. “At the same time, calling to the fore such aberrations revives in every right-minded person the duty to do what he or she can so that such inhuman barbarity never happens again.” Vatican press spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Pope John Paul II had seen the film in its entirety in a private viewing before his death and was “very impressed” with the portrayal and “appreciated the many scenes” from that period of his life. |
I liked it; in fact, I thought it was excellent. I am not that great a fan of JPII, who I think should have done more to correct the horrible errors of the "spirit of Vatican II," but this was an excellent movie, and focused on what he did well and the events that had probably contributed a lot to his development and focus.
Thanks for the tip, brother. I will Tivo it
I disagree. I think he did. Check this other post of mine, for example: The Church before Pope John Paul the Great. That he didn't turn the clock back on everything, however, is to his merit and not something to be faulted.
I didn't want him to "turn back the clock." I wanted him to exert a little authority over the bishops here, something he was never able to do here or anywhere else, for that matter. If somebody had kicked these jerks out (most of them appointed under Paul VI and Msgr. Jadot), dioceses would not be having to declare bankruptcy and sell their churches today. In my mind, JPII failed in many ways, particularly in the US.
But only God knows how these things work out. JPII abandoned the Church in the US, but he did good things elsewhere. In addition, he was heroic in his death. He was a media person, and when a media person lets himself be filmed in extremis, obviously sick, dying, and shocking to those who have never seen this before, that person has (in my mind) moved on to heroic virtue.
Sorry, but I hated it. Cardboard characters (several surely invented out of thin air), a contrived whiff of a romantic interest to sex up the plot, and cartoon bad guys.
--I hate to agree, but Romulus is half-right: the subject matter is more than worthwhile; it's the presentation that left something to be desired. If you take it with a gram of salt, that TV biographies have to add the expected cliches, this does rate a second look. I admit I don't feel guilty about not watching it again, though it can't be worse than the later planned biographies on the networks. Word is that our blessed John Paul saw this and approved, so make of it what you wish.
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