As a young man, the Pope was a hottie. On this point the upcoming dueling John Paul II movies agree.
In terms of the defining influence of early family tragedies, the dramatizations suggest some disagreement.
ABC bows first with “Have No Fear: The Life of Pope John Paul II,” airing tonight at 7 on KMGH-Channel 7. CBS follows with the longer, ultimately better production, “Pope John Paul II” on Sunday and Wednesday (8 p.m. Sunday, 7 p.m. Wednesday on KCNC-Channel 4).
Both chronicle the public and private life of the intellectual, actor, outdoorsman, passionate anti-communist and loyal servant of the church. The shorter film spends more time on the apparently profound impact of childhood losses.
The CBS film, with 66-year-old Jon Voight achieving an eerie likeness as the senior Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, and 43-year-old Cary Elwes capturing the vitality of Wojtyla as a young man, stresses the pope’s flashes of humor.
Young Karol’s ambivalence about joining the Nazi resistance in Poland is detailed, and we see him at an apparently critical juncture turn down his theater-troupe girlfriend (“You will find a husband. … My heart is already consumed.”)
According to this four-hour telefilm, Wojtyla was a hip teacher, telling students on kayaking and camping trips that “sexuality is dear to God if it is an expression of true love.”
This is a pontiff who loves life, a regular guy with a brilliant mind.
The ABC version stars 43-year-old Kretschmann (“The Pianist,” “King Kong”) doing the honors over a 60-year span. This two-hour film does better on certain political aspects: the Vatican’s behind-the-vote strategizing, the pleading of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salva-
dor, the pope’s disapproval of Romero’s liberation theology and Romero’s subsequent assassination. The ABC version dramatizes the deaths of young Karol’s mother, brother and father and the departure of the Jewish girl he kisses in a theater scene (“I wish this was real,” he tells her).
This is a pontiff who prays hard and doesn’t joke around.
A man of forgiveness
Both films reimagine the pope’s jail cell visit to his would-be assassin, where he preaches forgiveness. Both replay his trip to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall and his emotional connection to the Solidarity movement in Poland. Parkinson’s disease and the fall leading to hip surgery are re-enacted. Both revisit the deathbed vigil and take pains to show him as a man of peace, a holy man who endorsed “this gift of suffering.”
Both barely mention the pesky pedophile priest scandals in America.
And both use obvious symbols and news clips to advance what could be a subtler narrative.
Among the more pleasing differences is the presence of 75-year-old Ben Gazzara in the CBS telefilm. His raspy, gravelly voice is evidence of his 1999 battle with throat cancer, but he’s credible in the role of Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the pope’s confidante.
The starting point for the
Voight film is May 13, 1981, the day of the assassination attempt. The story then flashes back to Krakow 1939, as uniformed Nazis destroy a cross. There’s young Karol helping his friend the Jew – that would be the one in the armband and yarmulke.
Kretschmann’s portrayal on ABC opens in Jerusalem 2000, as a stooped and thin-looking pope asks forgiveness “for all the sins of the Catholic Church,” promising “never again.” Cut to Poland 1928, as Karol in short pants hears his mother’s horrible cough, warning of loss – and her deathbed scene – to come.
Blunt dialogue, too-obvious conflict and hyperventilating music mar the ABC production.
World Youth Day
Elwes hands off to Voight in the process of dressing (one head goes in the shirt, the other comes out) as the chronology continues. The cardinals’ difficulty pronouncing his name, the pope’s interactions with young people, the creation of World Youth Day and the 1993 trip to Denver flesh out the CBS film.
While the genius of a good TV movie is its ability to engage the viewer emotionally, to create sympathetic characters and to evoke powerful feelings of connection, at some point the reverie must end. Waking from the multiple odes to the charismatic modern pope, audiences may be forgiven for harboring nagging questions.
Why is the papal dismissal of a women’s demonstration in the streets noted only in passing as protesters bang on his limo? Why nothing more than a nod to the swirling controversies over ordaining women or the question of choice in matters of procreation?
As the actors move us close to tears we find ourselves wondering: Is it enough to show the likable pontiff hiking, kissing babies and asking forgiveness for the sins of the church? Or, at some point, shouldn’t a biography consider the storm of criticism whirling around the church for its passivity toward overpopulation in the Third World, its witchhunts of gay priests, its antipathy to science, its pronouncements on the meaning of “family” by men without families?
We don’t expect journalism here. But intellectual honesty in films that celebrate the intellect of their subject would lend balance.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
