The New Pope

I would like to claim that Paolo Sorrentino's series, The New Pope, is the best thing on TV this season.  But TV is now so fantastically variegated and globally ubiquitous that no single person can manage to see even a small percentage of the programs on offer.  As far as I know, there may well be some Icelandic thriller or Serbian sit-com, available on Netflix (and broadcast in about twenty languages including Polish, Slovenian and Korean) that is better.  But I doubt that there is any show, whatever it's source, as deliriously scandalous and entertaining  (and funny) as Sorrentino's program.

In the fourth episode of The New Pope, John Malkovitch in the titular role travels to Lourdes where Islamic terrorists have massacred ten pilgrims.  (We see the corpses sprawled in wheelchairs next to an icy, fierce-looking river -- one of the many striking visual spectacles that the show offers.)  A few shots later, by virtue of CGI, we behold about 100,000 of the faithful standing on the stony shore of the lethal-looking river waiting for the Pope to speak.  He stands at a podium and softly says "No", then, repeats himself more loudly, then, shouts the word over and over again.  This is all he does.  The next day, the International Press is abuzz with headlines as to his brilliant stunt in declining to speak and simply shouting one word to the multitude.  At the Vatican, the Pope says cynically that he will acquiesce to the "vulgar need for an explanation" in a few days, but, in the meantime, his mysterious utterance will have to suffice.  This little episode epitomizes some of the appeal of The New Pope.  First, the show decline to explain many of the mysteries that it presents.  It leaves "vulgar explanation" for other forums.   This is a  recognition that many things about the world are, indeed, mysterious and can't always been deciphered in a nyrational way -- indeed, human motivations are, for the most part, obscure.  Second, the Pope's profoundly cynical remarks are characteristic:  the show presents us with the most consequential events, theological and ecclesiastical struggles of the utmost seriousness, but these conflicts are always presented in a framework of Machiavellian machinations that involve completely cynical political calculations.  Sorrentino's programs blend the most remarkably erotic imagery with scenes that are solemnly spectacular -- great conclaves of red-cloaked bishops, nuns in white habits dancing sensuously, beatific faces, the faces of angels involved in sexual orgies.  The show continuously skirts blasphemy and, certainly, many sequences inarguably blasphemous and, potentially offensive.  But blasphemy of a certain kind raises theological questions of extreme importance:  if God is as close to me as my carotid artery, a maxim held by pious Muslims, then, the divine is intimate with the human body, intimate with sin, and intimate with all sorts of sex.  Pious Jews are willing to debate the Almighty as to His ways and have convened trials of God over the holocaust -- if we take religion seriously, we must always approach God with a degree of heart-felt intimacy that invites blasphemy.  What are we to make of Bernini's St. Theresa of Avila swooning in an obvious orgasm as Eros, in the form of sadistic, bratty-looking cherub, penetrates her with a flaming arrow.  Religious ecstasy is a cunt-hair away from sexual ecstasy.  And the notion that the ecstatic love of God is rooted, necessarily, in eros is central to Sorrentino's vision.  His gyrating nuns, pole-dancing with a great neon cross in the opening titles to the series, demonstrate the concept that the love of God is not remote from sexual love and, indeed, the same ecstatic characteristics underlie both emotional states.  A similar confusion between profane and secular arises in the show's political and theological debates -- the institutional church, vastly important to billions of people, must be preserved at all costs.  Indeed, the program posits that the great clerics, the mighty guardians of the Faith, must be willing to do the most loathsome things to protect the Holy Catholic Church -- in this regard, we are continuously confronted with the paradox that the highest officials in the Church must be willing to commit sins that will condemn their souls to Hell in order to serve the highest of interests, that is, protecting and maintaining the Church as a power relevant to this sinful and fallen world.

The situation in The New Pope is this:  the much-beloved celebrity Pope, and the central figure in the precursor series The Young Pope, has fallen into a coma.  He isn't alive and he's isn't dead.  (The Young Pope, the American Lenny Belardo, is played by Jude Law -- he lies on sepulchral bed in a Venetian hospital filled with salacious, sexually hysterical nuns:  I think their wild Dionysiac frenzy signifies the sexual appeal of the handsome, young reformer pope now stricken and motionless in a coma.)  The Vatican conclave initially selected as a replacement an earnest fellow (a bit like the present Pope Francis) who took the Church's vows of poverty seriously.  When he ordered the Church to divest its art works and offer the Basilica as a refuge for African and Syrian refugees, he suffered a mysterious heart attack and died -- it is widely believed that the College of Cardinals on some level had him murdered.  The Church leaders, led by the brilliant Machievellian Cardinal Voiello, travel to England seeking to enlist the English Cardinal John Brannox as candidate for the papacy.  Brannox is played as a kind of decadent sacred monster by John Malkovich -- we first see him, to the tune of the riff from Dylan's "All along the Watchtower", wearing eye-shadow and lounging about like some denizen of an Aubrey Beardsley engraving.  Brannox, who thinks that that "God doesn't like him," refuses to stand for election as the Pope -- that is, until the devious Voiello suggests that the Vatican might be interested in a French nobleman, also a cardinal, for the papacy.  This ploy appeals to Brannox' English vanity and he agrees to go to Rome where he is promptly elected as Pope.  Brannox describes himself as weak and, possibly, an enemy of God and, unlike Lenny Belardo or the poor assassinated Francis, he is no reformer -- at least at the outset.  He recognizes that the most important task facing him is purging the clergy of pedophiles -- a task complicated by the fact that he is surrounded by unctuous homosexual clergy who don't exactly approve of his efforts at Reform.  The new Pope's work is further complicated by the fact that Lenny Belardo may awaken from his coma at any time, creating the dangerous situation of a two popes competing for power.  The main action in the program is flanked by subplots:  there is a nun who has hidden a Syrian refugee in the Vatican for the purpose of continuing her torrid affair with him; the nuns at St. Peter's threaten to go on strike because one of them has been denied the opportunity to travel to Lourdes with her sick mother (the leader of the nuns is a dwarf who suffers from breast cancer); a smarmy Vatican official prostitutes a woman who has sought refuge in the Church -- in a bizarre fairy-tale sequence, this woman (who has conceived immaculately) is hired by an immensely wealthy woman to sleep with her deformed son, a young man who seems to be something like a werewolf.  Further, the situation is complicated by the machinations of the various factions in the Vatican, all of this managed by the wily Voiello, the figure who is the true hero of the series and, certainly, the program's most compelling character.

A summary of the show's fourth episode will give a sense for the program's complexity and strangeness.  Sharon Stone, playing herself, has an audience with the Pope.  (Last week, the Pope met with Marilyn Manson).  Sharon Stone is ordered to not cross or uncross her legs -- a reference to the famous scene in Basic Instinct.  She pleads with the Pope to recognize homosexual marriages.  He declines saying that he is not sufficiently strong to effect this reform.  "Are you porcelain or steel?" someone asks Brannox.  "Why must I be either?" He asks.  "Perhaps, I am fiber-glass.  The terrorist attack at Lourdes requires that the Pope speak there.  He delivers his one-word denunciation and, then, plans for an interview with a powerful journalist.  The pope seems to be intrigued with the beautiful Sophia Dubois, the Vatican's chief publicist -- we frequently see her nude and engaged in various exotic sex acts.  The pope meets Sophia in the catacombs for what seems to be a date.  He tells her that he is an advocate of "the middle way" -- invoking Buddhism apparently -- and says that he is going to allow clergy to marry.  There are some flashbacks to the Pope's childhood on a great manorial estate in England.  As a child, Brannox with his twin brother seem to have captured and raised giant black millipedes.  The young boys pray to the millipedes as God and, from time to time, we see the creatures crawling out of ears or wiggling over the belly of the prostrate and comatose "young pope".  (The millipedes, I think, are in fact a symbol of God's presence).  There are some sex scenes with the nun and her Syrian boyfriend as well as nude scenes (licentiously presented) involving the prostitute in the Basilica.  In a remarkable scene, Voiello, the manipulative Cardinal and Secretary of State, goes to a hermitage where he sees an ancient priest who was old when he was a young seminarian.  The hermitage seems to be in some kind of rocky grotto.  Voiello, who is a great soccer fan, cares for a boy terribly afflicted by mental retardation and cerebral palsy.  The boy is with Voiello and he grunts and moans happily when he sees the ancient, senile priest at the hermitage.  The old priest, despite being demented, also grunts and moans in recognition of the boy's happiness as Voiello looks on joyfully.  Then, the young pope in his coma begins sighing every 416 breaths, then, 415 breaths, then, 414 breaths and so on --- Lenny Belardo's labored breathing is broadcast over the Vatican radio so everyone can hear his every breath and his sighs.  It appears that the Young Pope is, perhaps, about to revive.

All of this is presented with the most fluent and eloquent mise-en-scene imaginable.  The camera glides over acres of marble and gorgeous renascence frescos.  The Pope wears white and swoops around like a great pale bird of prey.  (He wears bright red pointed shoes -- during his audience with Sharon Stone, she leaves her high heels for the Pope as a gift.)  The beautiful people are so transcendentally beautiful that seem more angel than human.  Like Fellini, Sorrentino is a great connoisseur of unusual faces -- the cardinals are either gorgeous or hideous flabby monsters.  Everyone has memorable features or gestures, although often enigmatic.  There are extended montages in which the camera simply glides through sumptuous rooms inspecting the various characters in the film, bringing us up to date, for instance, as to who they are sleeping with or their other machination.  When the Pope calls Sofia, the telephone rings and rings, while Sorrentino's camera visits all of his characters.  Similarly, the Young Pope's labored breathing provides another occasion for an aria of camera motion sliding through the great gloomy halls, surveying the fanatical devotees of the comatose pope sleeping in a piazza, and visualizing Lenny under his oxygen mask as the sacred millipede crawls over his motionless body.

Mysterious and, often, strangely heartbreaking, The New Pope reminds me of David Lynch's sensibility -- but Sorrentino is a surrealist less influenced by late-stage Dali (although Bunuel is an influence) than byGucci, Armani, and the excellencies of Italian cuisine and architecture.  The show breathes the hot-house atmosphere of the high Baroque.  It's altogether extraordinary.