Report with a cross on the neck – Weekend

Abel Ferrara’s film about the temptation of the Catholic saint Padre Pio, which in Russia was arbitrarily called “The Young Pope”, is being released. Shia LaBeouf, along with his hero, fights his own demons on screen.

Text: Andrey Kartashov

“The Young Pope”? Don’t be fooled: the new film by Abel Ferrara, an American director who moved to his historical homeland 20 years ago, has nothing to do with Paolo Sorrentino’s series, and the Pope does not even appear in it as a portrait. The central character is really not old, but with the same success the title could be localized as, for example, “Breaking Bad” – and it would be even more accurate. In fact, the painting is called “Padre Pio” – in honor of the monk and priest from the Capuchin Order, who was one of the most popular figures of the Italian and generally Catholic clergy in the 20th century. Father Pio, played by Shia LaBeouf in the film, spent most of his life in a monastery in the town of San Giovanni Rotondo, and the film takes place during his early years there, immediately after the end of the First World War. Already during Pio’s lifetime, miraculous deeds were attributed to him, and 35 years after his death he was canonized by Pope John Paul II.

However, although the name of the saint is included in the title of the picture, it is difficult for Pio to call it the main character. The film’s dramaturgy is not coherent, and the scenes involving the monk take up less time than the plot about local peasants – mostly war veterans, who, having returned from the front, are forced to return to grueling work in the fields and in the quarry. The profits from their work are received by the landowner, who despises both the hard workers themselves and the smart socialists who campaign among them under red flags. Ferrara and co-writer Maurizio Braucci’s sympathy for the left is obvious, and their political message, while not entirely specific, is sharpened by the fact that the action takes place at a turning point in European history.

To appreciate this, it is not necessary to understand in detail what was happening in Italy 100 years ago – it is enough to remember that in these very years the political rise of Benito Mussolini began. And the plot about a barely emerging democracy, which the old elites immediately try to break, is, alas, too widespread and therefore recognizable and understandable without any context: those who voted incorrectly in the elections are fired from their jobs, the parish priest blesses the police who disperse the townspeople, protesters against arbitrariness… The former mayor’s baseless statements about the allegedly stolen elections should probably remind us of similar claims by Donald Trump, but in general Ferrara is more interested not in specific events and people, but in general categories: cynicism versus idealism, cruelty versus humanism. Italian fascism here is the archetype of the right of might, a clear example of the eternal struggle between God and the devil for the hearts of people.

A direct parallel between Christianity and Marxism is drawn by one of the communists, who in a conversation recalls what Jesus said about the possibility of the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. However, with this vague parallel (in the spirit of Mikhail Gorbachev, who called Christ the first socialist), the connection between the religious and political plots of the film, in general, is exhausted. Ferrara’s Padre Pio is completely immersed in issues of personal morality and is not involved in the confrontation between left and right. This does not quite correspond to the real biography of the saint, who rarely, but still participated in public life – at first he sympathized with the fascists, soon became disillusioned with them, but continued to criticize the leftist movement. By highlighting this aspect of Pio’s life, Ferrara and Braucci could have more closely connected the two dramatic lines and made the character even more ambiguous, but they chose to remain silent about his connection with fascism and portray him as a man not of this world. The spiritual and secular in the film are completely divorced: Pio does not leave his cell, occasionally communicates with laymen who come to him for advice, more often with his personal demons, whom he sees in ecstatic visions.

There are a lot of personal demons in the life of Shia LaBeouf, who plays the role of Pio. Before the film’s premiere at last year’s Venice Film Festival, the controversial actor had not acted in films or appeared in public for about two years – after singer FKA Twigs, who dated LaBeouf, brought accusations of violence against him. The trial has yet to take place, and LaBeouf has denied doing anything criminal, but has admitted that he mistreated his ex-girlfriend (without being specific) and that he ruined his life with alcohol and ego. According to the actor, to work on the image of Padre Pio, he lived among the monks, and then converted to Catholicism and is now trying to live according to the rules of Christian virtue. And all these biographical details are an important context for understanding the film, whose authors hardly wanted the viewer to separate the character from the artist who played him. When at the beginning of the picture the demonic interlocutor who has dreamed of Pio accuses him of narcissism and depravity, it seems as if he is addressing LaBeouf himself.

Thanks to this, the scenes in Pio’s cell become more convincing: we see before us a man in a state of mental breakdown, haunted by the ghosts of the past. This is also where the film’s visual design turns out to be most appropriate—a restless camera, dark interiors, tight close-ups. Having spent his entire life filming about sinners, having himself experienced a period of self-destruction and addiction, Ferrara here, too, is trying to capture, through the means of cinema, some gloomy, inexpressible matter of life and the human soul. The most unexpected and most memorable scene of the film is the one where a certain character, identified in the credits as a “tall man,” played by Asia Argento in a jacket, comes to confess to Pio. Argento, like LaBeouf, became involved in a major scandal several years ago – the actress was accused of seducing a minor. Here her hero admits to an incestuous attraction to his own daughter, and Pio breaks into an obscene scream in response. The dark grotesqueness of the confession scene makes up for many of the film’s shortcomings – imperfect, but filled with dark energy that would be difficult to channel into smoother direction and a more coherent plot.

In theaters from October 12

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