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In case I haven’t clarified that universal thematic canvas one can only mold if they let go of rigid lenses towards that perspective. So if someone isn’t able or willing to do that then they will use that context as a base instead. We all of course bring our own contexts and ways of approaching this subject to the table, and perhaps it’s easier to access if one approaches the material with agnosticism, but it works both ways- vague universal signifiers can’t be grasped if one meets them with specificity. I’m not saying it’s the wrong way to approach the show because it’s hardly in one’s control, and I’m sure with a background different than mine you have the potential to get something differently out of it that my context won’t allow, but I also think that refusal to surrender is a handicap here. That’s just my perspective, but yeah you’re not going to have that experience of accessing unifying common denominators in abstract concepts that hit the buttons of humanism if viewing it through its surface iconography and taking that as concrete definitions for access.

For clarity on the “our intellectual world” line, contrast the place of Catholic theology with Freudian psychoanalysis. Catholic theology is central to many, but its concepts no longer offer central or guiding metaphors that we’re hard-pressed to understand the modern world without. There’s no deficit to not knowing what transubstantiation is, but I’d look at you cockeyed if you’d never heard of the id or the ego (the latter is even in latin) or the Oedipus complex.

Also, it was the Augustine of the City of God, the systematizer and explainer of all the mysteries and decisions of the church, rather than the author of The Confessions, that I had in mind.

Anyway, I never took any given bit of theology in the film to be complex. It’s the whiplash effect of getting so many different perspectives, often attended by an ironic tone, that gives the show its complexity. That and it being about how one in the modern world goes about dealing with, as it were, the real thing when confronted with it.

I wonder how people who struggle through the first film will respond to the sequel, as I think it makes painstakingly obvious these more abstract readings of a peripheral perspective and unifying humanism. While I was glad to see this validated I wonder if going back and rewatching from the beginning will change the minds of others in hindsight, as for me the base of the first film made the second function on a level beyond the easier access of identification (at least up to a point..) it would appear to be if watched without that context

I agree that the show presents an outsider's view of Catholicism and in some places (not across the board by any means) a distorted one, but this doesn't really bother me or prevent me from engaging with it on its own terms. Many of the issues the show raises about faith and doubt, authority, public profession of faith vs. private spirituality, etc., aren't really unique to Catholicism except to the degree that the Catholic Church's unique institutional/political position in the western world is involved. I could imagine a broadly similar story, perhaps on a smaller scale but ultimately dealing with the same issues in much the same way, being told about a religious leader of almost any stripe. Basically I agree with most of Mr. Sausage's post above (though I would love to see The Young Civitas Dei if anyone could make it!), which allows me to connect on a personal level with the material more or less independently of any affinity with the specific milieu.

I hear what you say, Red Screamer, about the psychology of Lennie's backstory, since I felt the same way about the first few episodes, but in the end I felt that the ultimate use of this material fully justified everything that set it up.

Many good posts; just to be clear I was not denigrating the show for not being sufficiently theological, let alone attempting something from two of the last major writers of epic poetry. Sausage, I think your point about the ideology changing impacting the show is something that is reflected by the content of the show itself, especially the speech from Pius that I mentioned in my first post. It's that very conflict between, for lack of a better phrase, the "world" and the "church" (and from that dynamic we can also talk about the power structure of the church and its relation to truth) which Pius addresses in his crucial speech to the Cardinals. [Incidentally, I do know the meaning of transubstantiation; and I have no idea what Freud meant by those terms.]

You mean when you encounter id, ego, and Oedipus complex in pop culture or random conversation, you’re baffled, like if someone name checked, I don’t know, paraconsistency?

Or do you mean you couldn’t say what Freud specifically meant by them in his written work, while recognizing the concepts and being able to use them in a sentence?

I know the Oedpius complex, but I honestly don't really know what he meant by the other three terms. I just know them as "Freudian"--maybe they've come up in some Woody Allen movies, or--with my username--ridiculed by Nabokov. Incidentally, this aside reminds me of another fairly recent Catholic artist. There's the story of Flannery O'Connor at dinner and Mary McCarthy said the Eucharist was a beautiful symbol, and Flannery said something like "If it's a symbol, to hell with it." Now I'd like to get her thoughts on Pius...

Well, let’s settle halfway and say you’d know what I meant if I said some dude had a huge ego. And I’d be surprised if you didn’t have a basic sense of id in context, ie. you wouldn’t be lost if it cropped up in a conversation about someone with low impulse control or who tended to be driven by basic desires. Pop culture usually associates it with a lack of sophistication or complexity.

John Shade wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2020 6:17 pm There's the story of Flannery O'Connor at dinner and Mary McCarthy said the Eucharist was a beautiful symbol, and Flannery said something like "If it's a symbol, to hell with it." Now I'd like to get her thoughts on Pius...

That story comes from O'Connor's letters:

Flannery O'Connor wrote:Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being the Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. [Mary McCarthy] said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the 'most portable' person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, 'Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.' That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.

I think what O'Connor would think of Pius depends on which side of Pius and during what point in the film, as he is a complex person who has a complicated relationship to faith as many do (including O'Connor). She would probably relate to him though, going by this quote, given his loyalty to God as the keeper of mysteries, and as a clear fan of ritual as significant for the meaning symbols carry in them rather than what they lead to, which is I think what that quote is getting at - the indescribable spirituality that is not only symbolic, which minimizes its significance, but is a symbol that carries in its essence a power to transform the soul, which is the broad universality that I think the film acknowledges as powerful about these aspects of faith, and that makes such omnipresence also individualized due to one's own experience with that unconditional love or spiritual awakening, as O'Connor hints at in the end of her quote. They symbolize our own interpretations but there is a binding energy within them that does so, connecting us all to this force that some call God.

therewillbeblus wrote: Tue Nov 05, 2019 12:19 am I’m approaching this with trepidation in my expectations considering how perfect the first series was, but I’m with you, this looks incredible. It should be interesting to watch

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conflict move from that between a man and himself (and God), and how this then impacts the rest of the population - to a conflict between men with opposing positions and equal political status. I don’t think the show will ever sacrifice that inner conflict, but adding this variable as a possible threat in human form to both Law’s sense of identity and perhaps God’s will, has potential

The New Pope

Well, I couldn't have been more wrong about this prediction, except that the show will never sacrifice that inner conflict! If anything, it's far more expansive in its application than conflicting between positions.

jindianajonz wrote: Sat Jan 25, 2020 8:22 pm I'm loving this show, and anybody who is on the fence about participating should jump at the chance to get Clarence's code, if they haven't already. Big thanks to Therewillbeblus for letting me have his code!

I'm currently halfway through (episode 5 completed) and still don't have a firm grasp on where this is going or what its trying to do, so I think you all made the right choice in not breaking it down episode by episode. Unfortunately, that also means I'm struggling to put any coherent discussion together, so instead I'm going to focus on my feelings episode by episode, which will likely result in me talking about all the things I'm pretty sure this show isn't.

Spoilers through episode 5

Jude Law has given us a fascinating cipher of a character. As I approached the end of episode 2, I still naively believed that this pope would be the liberal reformer hinted at in the dream sequence opener. Sure, he was being harsh with the cardinals, but what reformer wouldn't have conflict with the status quo? And he freed a kangaroo, surely he has strong liberal impulses to not want to keep a wild creature caged? But then he gave his first address to the masses, and I realized that, like the cardinals who put him in power, everything I thought I knew about him was wrong.

What's fascinating is that ever since then, I don't feel like I have a better grasp on who he is. He is chameleonic, and seems to adopt a different personality depending on who he is talking to. When in front of groups of people, he is rigid and wrathful, straight from the old testament, but with his adopted mother or brother, he shows signs of compassion and happiness. Unless of course he is addressing them in front of others, in which case is causticsity creeps back in. He jokes to Tommasso that God doesn't' exist and at different times claims to have his own lapses in faith, but then we see him on his knees proclaiming to God that he never doubted- or is it just an act for the nun in the next room? Likewise, he shows Esther a unique gentleness that isn't present anywhere else in the show- enough to win over even Cardinal Voiello- but later interactions make me wonder if this is an act as well. But then again, he did offer a prayer for Esther and her husband to become pregnant, but then- well, it's just contradiction after contradiction.

So who is Lenny Belardo? To Voiello, he is a savvy and brutal political wunderkind. To Tommasso, he is a deeply uncertain leader who may be having a crisis of faith. To Guitierrez, he's a friend to stroll through the garden and share secrets with. To Esther, he's a wise and devout leader with an unending supply of sage advice. To the the masses, he's a mysterious and wrathful embodiment of the old testament. To Sister Mary and Andrew, he's the son and brother deserving of uncompromising love and support. How can all these people be reconciled into one man, and which are more true than all the others? I have no clue.

Likewise, I'm still not sure what Sorentino is trying to do with all this. It's easy to make comparisons to Donald Trump, but I think this is a red herring. Both are dark horse candidates who came to power from people who cast mistaken views on who they were, but that's where the comparison ends. Whereas Trump will negotiate anything to ensure his survival, Belardo has a such a zelous devotion to his plan that he seems willing to sacrifice the entire church- and therefore the source of all his power- in order to achieve it. Maybe there are parallels with Italy's proto-Trump, Berlusconi, but I don't know enough about him to make any arguments on this front.

Regardless of feeling a bit adrift in all this, I'm loving every minute of this show, and can't wait to see where it goes next.

No pressure, jindianajonz, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts once you finish the first film to see how they change. I largely agree with most of what you wrote, outside of the final paragraph, and would only argue that all those perspectives comprising one man that you pose as a question is the essence of the complex humanism part of this story.

Was reading Eric Griffiths' interesting introduction to the Penguin anthology Dante in English, and thought his comments illuminate The Young Pope in several ways.

The first is his comment that theology is always belated, ie. theology is an explanation that must be preceded by an event. "[T]heology belatedly attempts to fashion a coherence to its liking from the scriptural narratives" because of course "all Christian formulations come 'after the event', the event of Incarnation". Narrative precedes theology, of which theology is the attempt to locate coherence in what has occurred, to fashion rules and structures out of event.

In Griffiths' terms, there is a difference between "Occurrence" and "Conceptualization", between what happens and the intellectual work of fashioning a system of meaning from it. The Young Pope is Occurrence, the thing that precedes and demands Conceptualization. It has the exploratory, contrasting, inconsistent, polysemous quality we find in narrative storytelling out of which one can later construct a coherent system. The Young Pope is not theological, because it is not an attempt to impose a conceptual system (Catholic or otherwise) on Christian narrative. It is itself a Christian narrative (tho' not only a Christian one).

Griffiths quotes an interesting observation by Clifford Geertz that theorists of religion have by and large "failed to see man as moving more or less easily, and very frequently, between radically contrasting ways of looking at the world, ways which are not continuous with one another but separated by cultural gaps". We see this very thing represented in The Young Pope, in which not only is Lenny constantly pinging among "radically contrasting ways of looking at the world", to the consternation of all the Bishops who'd prefer to be settled in their worldviews (tho' they show their own subtle cracks), but also demanding from those around him, and the viewer, too, equally radical and contradictory responses and viewpoints to him and his ideas. The Young Pope is Occurrence in that it expresses through, and embodies in, narrative a constant fact of human experience: our many-sidedness, our ability to inhabit easily and without fatal fracture discontinuous points of view and ideas of the world. The Young Pope brings to the Catholic church not the ideas of monumentality, stability, or permanence backed by systematized thought, nor any attempt to reconcile contradictions and bring to the church clearer explanations. The film brings to the Church what it, and the world, always had: discontinuity, gaps, plethora, and 'radical contrast' all existing in a system that still works. And the gaps are not a break from god, either, as they often are in stories of priests struggling with worldly issues, something to be recovered from or gotten over on the path to grace; they are in fact the state in which to find god.

I think the why of this story, why it's structured like it is, is encapsulated in Griffiths' comment about the Commedia: "Dante had to cast his poem as a story because his subject was an ongoing learning process, not the display of a finished product." I said it earlier, but The Young Pope is a process the viewer undergoes that leads one to a fuller experience of wrestling with mystery. We, like the bishops and the faithful of the story, are in a constant, shifting process of learning how to deal with Lenny. It is only at the end that you see why one should have to deal with Lenny, and by that point we discover we've been on a journey through human nature to arrive inside the mystery of sainthood. If theology is reconciling the contradictions of the word, The Young Pope is the experience of contradiction unreconciled, even vital and necessary.

These comments capture I think the spirit of the film as TWBBs has set out above, as well as the position it's in:

"Virgil gives [Dante]...advice which a medieval exegete would have endorsed...'don't keep your mind fixed on just one place'... For Dante, a child of his time, the Scriptures were necessarily ambiguous with the ambiguity of any ongoing process, even when that process is believed to be a process of salvation. He had also been schooled in the belief that this process had an end in which all would be revealed, the 'heavenly library' be discovered, for all the density of its cross-references and weirdly unpredictable shelving, as perfectly in accord with itself, when the many books of the 'biblia' would indeed be legible as a single book. 'Apocalypse' ('uncovering') is the name for that end in which the oneness of Scriptures is unveiled, an end of readings and interpretations...

The film is pre-revelation, even at its close. It brings understanding, as any learning experience ought, but stops short of bringing its ambiguous ongoing process into clear legibility. There is no perfect accord, no end of reading to the story. And "don't keep your mind fixed on just one place" is a great summation of the effect of the film.

Finally, Griffiths writes

"The issue of scriptural interpretation is not part of the Commedia's 'intellectual background' but at the heart of its shape, the shape of that learning process through which Dante grows to an understanding of what it might mean for him to be saved.

And so the shape of The Young Pope has at its heart a similar learning process, a fuller understanding of what it might mean for a many-sided, varied, even contradictory modern person to confront a genuine mystery, and what it might mean to have to accept that ultimate love comes from inhabiting ambiguity and contradiction, from embracing vulnerability and multiplicity, and so many other so-called human frailties.

I loved reading that Sausage, I couldn’t agree more

Very excited for your thoughts on the sequel given our similar interpretive attitudes on this one

No US release date for the New Pope yet, but it'll be coming to UK Blu-ray on March 9th!

That's great to hear! I'm a citizen of the world when it comes to blu-rays.

domino harvey wrote: Mon Feb 24, 2020 11:48 pm No US release date for the New Pope yet, but it'll be coming to UK Blu-ray on March 9th!

Already?! Well this is just fantastic. That's the day the final episode will air in the U.S.

Guess I'll delete my subs for the last few (unless anyone is planning on getting to this earlier and wants them) and pre-order the release. Thrilled to watch this again immediately and hear everyone's thoughts

Not that it matters much now that the UK blu-ray is out so soon, but StudioCanal put this out in France on Feb 8

therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 5:21 am If you think Sorrentino threw us for a loop with the first season’s credit sequences, prepare to be enlightened.

Yes, the six different opening credits that block off the first part (and I think despite length of parts, the sequel is really blocked in half starting with the seventh episode and the credits help differentiate the two) of the New Pope are probably the cheekiest, "I don't give a fuck" style-o-rama nonsense yet from Sorrentino-- followed by the majority of episodes taking a structural cue from, of all things, Strangers With Candy! I thought the first film’s weirdness was ultimately justified by its need to disorient and dazzle viewers, but here it feels a bit more like Stanley Donen on the set of Arabesque— a director producing good-looking parlor tricks to stay awake.

As I’ve already said, the first film is self-contained and didn’t need a sequel, and for much of the length of this one it seemed that Sorrentino agreed with me. I don’t know how the impetus for this project originated, but if it actually came from Sorrentino and not the various financial backers and producers wanting another tax write-off by commissioning a second installment, I’d be shocked. Like many a director dragged kicking and screaming back to something, he exhibits an appropriate amount of distancing and disdain for the return bite of the apple. For most of this, I was amused and never bored, but also only too aware that flashy filmmaking chops and style overload only matter when tethered to deeper purpose. It shares the uneasy roll-out of its predecessor, but the end result here doesn’t manage to lock the variable pieces into a satisfying enough whole for this to rise above an entertaining piss-take, which is where I’d rank it. At the end, we are essentially where we started, though perhaps a little more invested in Silvio Orlando’s Voiello (the clear MVP of the sequel). I do think the last three episodes try to race against the clock to self-correct, but all the last three hours did is remind me we spent the first six spinning wheels.

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I thought the film settled the question of Law’s sainthood/Christ/AntiChrist status the only way it could, by embracing the mystery. The film did a good job of slyly setting this up by having Orlando orchestrate de France’s earlier denial press conference, wherein we learn any definitive answer given will be mistrusted, therefore one must offer no definitive answer to be believed. However, rather than coming in at the tail-end of the sequel, I feel like the theological wrestlings of the previous entry would have found far more lush vegetation in this orchard to harvest from. I thought the closest this entry got to the huge grappling questions of the previous was Law’s willingness to embrace and stoke a new Catholic Fundamentalism in opposition to Islamic Fundamentalism, which is a fascinating idea. I also liked the “Wait, is he the AntiChrist?” doom and gloom of Law’s return to the pulpit inside the bishop meeting— what a startling reminder that Law’s power comes from this rapidly changing read of who he is.

Of course, the biggest and most obvious flaw of the series is that Malkovich’s new pope is not very interesting, his backstory and secrets too familiar, and the name dropping cutesiness of his celeb encounters are often just awkward (I wanted to die at that lame meta Malkovich joke). I like the idea of this character, but he ends up what his character wants to be: the pope-equivalent of Franklin Pierce. The problem is the show relies on him to carry the weight til Law comes back into play, and he can’t.

I think ultimately the sequel fails to generate anything near the interest level of the first, but if I sound overly negative, it’s because it pales so strongly in comparison to what came before… but what came before is for me one of the great works of art of the modern era. In isolation, this is enjoyably off-kilter and never boring little diversion that is basically a mixtape of like sixty different music videos punctuated with dialogue. Like nearly all sequels, it doesn’t need to exist. But since it does exist, it ultimately functions best as a coda to the first film, an appendix not necessary but not ruinous to what came before either.

Some stray additional thoughts:

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I loved the broad comic nonsense of the Francis II in the first episode. But I think the show neutered this enjoyable lunacy by having Orlando go all Godfather Part III, which made him too broad, even if allegedly Law is the one who carried out the punishment. Between Orlando's fixer and Sagnier choking out the rich old lady and then killing priests in the name of Law, I think the film overextended its suspension of disbelief.

I like how Orlando's last act as secretary of state is essentially to use all his intel to do good for the intra-convent in recognition of a good fight. It reminded me of how effective the first film was at allowing us to rethink what we know about a character and their motivations with new information. The funeral scene is also quite moving.

Sagnier and de France's characters were not among the more interesting last go around, and their promotion to utility players this time is a mistake. Sagnier's trajectory is absurd, and de France's boring.

Nice thoughts, I don’t think I read Malkovich’s character much different in terms of how he’s presented but

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his uninteresting banal nature and decisions to take advantage of his position via celebrity encounters, etc. only reinforce that he is like us, with the flaws, fears, and lack of marvel, a relatable surrogate that also reminds us of what -or who- we’re missing in Lenny (a stand in for a greater mystery beyond the mystery of our own identities). Since I thought that was the point of the whole sequel- a return to absolute introspection in ourselves without the outlet of the distraction of an enigmatic other, now that we have given rope to the existence of saints and miracles- Malkovich’s shrug of a human being on the surface was very moving, and makes the context between viewer and milieu interesting oddly precisely by being so plain. However, that plainness contains an honest complexity inherent in human beings that is just as nebulous and enigmatic as god or Lenny, so what may seem passive I believe are the ingredients to make life as fascinating as Lenny’s Saint, only in the familiar.

To be reductive, the first film asked us to take a leap of faith, empathize and open our minds to alternate perspectives including the idea that mysteries exist that we cannot explain with corporeal logic by humanizing a superhuman figure; while the sequel uses that peripheral growth obtained in the first and asks us to do the same without him to our own humanity. That is, until Lenny shows up and shakes the tree enough to catapult this into even more bizarre territory. It’s wild an inconsistent but the questions that eventually get asked are even more challenging and uncomfortable in some ways.

I agree that the first is better, but I, like you, consider it an all-timer so it’s hard to compete. This wasn’t necessary but I’m glad that the direction Sorrentino went was to find a new pathway into similar spiritual territory, and I loved it for not taking any easy routes and creatively building on the first film.

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I’m very curious as to how people feel about Esther’s development in this one..

Re: Esther in the New Pope

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I think Sagnier’s character arc here is muddled but probably supposed to highlight the dangers of living iconography and idolatry— but it’s too messy and the film’s narrative ask in the leap to accept the hardline Lenny fanatics would kill fellow Catholics under the guise of Islamic terrorism is unearned by what we see. What is their end goal in these actions? It made no sense and wasn’t engaged with the compelling question of what Catholic Fundamentalism would look like. Islamic Fundamentalism has goals and ideology driving its horrors. This just felt like a cheap twist (and a rather telegraphed one by the end). I think a better version of this film would have spent more time examining the problem of Law being a living saint (which he is but which he recognizes he must walk back in his final speech for the greater good) in terms of how it would negatively impact his supporters, with the weird journey of Sagnier being our “in”— that’s sort of what we got, but it lacks real depth or stridency to the scenario.

Sorrentino has a “crazy, crazy idea” for a third season

“I have another season in my mind,” he said. “I don’t know if I will do that. I should find time to do that, and I should convince HBO in order to do that. I have a new idea for a third season, but it’s a crazy, crazy idea so I don’t know if it’s easy to realize. It’s an idea completely outside the Vatican — it’s really different.”

Sorrentino didn’t want to reveal much more, but did confirm all the main characters from “The Young Pope” and “The New Pope” would be involved in a story he referred to as “sort of a prequel.”

Yeah, I don’t see much potential for a third installment unless it’s about something radically removed from the first two parts, as this already felt superfluous