REVIEW: We Have a Pope (2011)

Do we live in such jaded times? Because here's a film that looks one of the world's largest, most pious religions in the eye and tells everyone to start thinking for themselves—Buñuel caused outrages for less—and instead of incendiary, it feels curiously irrelevant. Even at last year's Cannes, where it played in competition, any budding religious controversy was overshadowed by Lars von Trier's Nazi ramble and the fact that The Tree of Life contained dinosaurs. Are iconoclastic statements like this no longer novel or unexpected? Or is it that the film's pervasively breezy tone undercuts its ultimately serious statement?

And so we have Nanni Moretti's We Have a Pope, coming from Italy to arthouses around the country, as a comic fable about the ironies and contradictions of institutionalized religion. Melville (arthouse stalwart Michel Piccoli) is a cardinal of no particular importance who, very much against his will—and for reasons left wonderfully up in the air—is voted to be the new Pope. Naturally, he panics. The thought of keeping the faith for over a billion followers is overwhelming, particularly since he's having a crisis of faith himself, and while he's frozen with anxiety, the Catholic Church is left, unbeknownst to the public, without a head. The clergy call in a top psychoanalyst (Moretti himself, as an actor/director), but the elderly Pope-to-be runs away and begins to experience life outside the Vatican.

At its best moments, We Have a Pope pulls off satire's greatest trick: being sharp and incisive without being mean-spirited. Moretti, a veteran of comedy, knows how to get a laugh, and Piccoli, a consummate pro, injects all the necessary warmth and empathy. It is, in short, a farcical parable about how religious responsibility and devotion suppress identity, which may or may not be true—ask a Catholic—but is certainly a worthy topic for a film.

But by the end, it’s a surprisingly underachieving execution of this idea. It leaves its concept and characters underused, focusing so much on easy and cute comic set-pieces (a clerical volleyball tournament!) that the narrative loses its shape and the final moments can't help but feel unearned. The phrase I keep seeing in reviews is "crowd-pleaser." There's plenty of truth to that, to be sure, but when the film switches tones and ends so thunderously, that label can't help but feel like a hollow victory. Nanni Moretti has been on the festival circuit for decades now collecting prizes. His new film feels like a lesser entry from a talented filmmaker who's done much better. But that's just another way of saying that We Have a Pope can get you to put the rest of his filmography into your Netflix queue.

3 out of 5 stars.

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We Have a Pope is now playing in select theaters.