By Alan Riding The New York Times
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2005
ROME Pope John Paul II's enduring charisma found unlikely expression here one recent afternoon. At the end of a day's filming of a new television movie about his life, Italian and Latin American extras rushed to be photographed beside the gray-haired man in papal gowns. That he happened to be Jon Voight seemed secondary. For the extras, this was as close as they would ever get to John Paul.
Voight, who at 66 persuasively evokes the older John Paul, is growing used to such reactions. After he spoke a few words about "the dignity of man" in Spanish while re-enacting John Paul's first visit to Mexico, the extras burst into spontaneous applause. And on the previous day, when the 1981 attempt on the pope's life was filmed, some of the extras burst into tears at the sight of the "wounded" pontiff.
For the movie's producers, all this is reassuring. It means that, even after the media extravaganza that accompanied John Paul's protracted death and monumental funeral, even after the pomp and ceremony of the election and installation of Benedict XVI as his successor, there may well be an audience for one more biopic retelling the story of the first Polish pontiff.
But how about two?
As it happens, two American television networks - ABC and CBS - had the same idea about the same time. Both movies are planned for this season, although no broadcast dates have yet been announced. ABC's "Have No Fear: The Life of John Paul II" will run two hours; the CBS mini-series version, with Voight, has the working title of "Pope John Paul II" and will run four hours over two evenings.
Inevitably, the road for both productions led to Rome, where ABC recently completed shooting, and CBS is working through mid-October.
And before Rome, while ABC did much of its filming in Vilnius, Lithuania, CBS covered a good part of John Paul's pre-Vatican life in Krakow, Poland, the city where he was archbishop before becoming pope in 1978.
For drama, of course, the films need look no further than John Paul's extraordinary life. The real question is how to shape this material.
Neither network made its script available, but both disclosed that they had opted to tell the story largely as a flashback: ABC opens with John Paul praying at the Western Wall during a visit to Jerusalem in 2000, while the CBS mini-series looks backward and forward from his wounding by a Turkish gunman in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981.
CBS has the better-known cast. A young-looking 42-year-old, the British actor Cary Elwes, plays Karol Wojtyla, as John Paul was originally known, until his election as pope, with Voight covering the 26-year-long papacy. Christopher Lee appears as Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, Poland's hard-line anti-communist patriarch, and Ben Gazzara is Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the Vatican's longtime secretary of state.
The ABC film, directed by Jeff Bleckner, has Thomas Kretschmann, 42, a Los Angeles-based German actor, playing Wojtyla from his student days at the age of 19 to his death at 84, a transformation that in later scenes required makeup sessions lasting four hours. In this film, Bruno Ganz is Wyszynski, while Joaquim de Almeida portrays El Salvador's slain archbishop, Oscar Arnulfo Romero.
Still, while both movies appear to approach John Paul with due reverence, there is one fundamental difference.
"Ours does not avoid controversy," said Lorenzo Minoli, one of the executive producers of ABC's "Have No Fear." "We show the pope's confrontation with Romero over liberation theology. We deal with the sex scandals in the American church. We depict his youthful friendship with several young women and even show an innocent kiss while he is acting in a play. We show 'the human man' behind the pope."
And he added: "We are not making an Opus Dei movie. Others are."
Certainly, Opus Dei, the very conservative Catholic order, is deeply involved in the CBS film. It is being co-produced by Lux Vide, a company based here and led by Ettore Bernabei and his son Luca, members of Opus Dei who have close ties to the Vatican, which vetted their original script. The movie's consultant, Alberto Michelini, is also an Opus Dei member; his son, Jan, the director of the movie's second unit, was baptized by John Paul.
John Kent Harrison, the movie's director, said the script he received from Lux Vide was based on faith, not politics. "Opus Dei objected to having politics, but we came to an understanding," he explained between scenes shot at a large college on the outskirts of this city. He also said there was no mention of the sexual abuse scandal in that script, "but I put in a scene."
Still, the Opus Dei connection has given CBS privileged access. For instance, Wojtyla's installation as archbishop was filmed in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, where it actually took place in 1964. The filming was witnessed by the present archbishop, Stanislaw Dziwisz, who for 40 years was John Paul's secretary and closest friend. CBS was even allowed to collect digital images inside the Vatican, including the Sistine Chapel.
The nearest ABC came to the Vatican was an overhead passageway linking the Vatican to the Castel Sant'Angelo. There, with St. Peter's in the background, it filmed a scene showing the pope as a young priest discussing the power of the Vatican and, in a way, anticipating his later travels. "When you become a pope, you become a prisoner of the Vatican," he says. "You can't leave. You can't meet the people and preach. You're just a captive of St. Peter's."
Kretschmann, who was reared in East Germany without any religious instruction, said he was initially excited as an actor to portray a man over a 60-year arc. "But then I started liking him very much," he added, "because he was passionate, because of his courage, because he was a fighter, because I think he really tried to spread love."
Voight, in contrast, was reared as a Catholic and graduated from Catholic University in Washington. "It is a privilege and an honor to play this role, but it is also very daunting," he said between scenes.
"It shows him as a moral force, his energy and spirit," Voight said. "I think it will be a film moving to many people."
In the end, though, much will depend on whether Kretschmann, Elwes and Voight are convincing in their portrayals of Karol Wojtyla.
About Voight, at least, Harrison has no doubts. "In Krakow, we had 500 extras for the pope's arrival in Warsaw in 1979," he said. "As Jon approached the crowd, you could see the hope on their faces, weeping, holding out babies, reaching for him, all sorts of emotions playing out. It all seemed very real."
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Copyright © 2005 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
The Life of John Paul II stars Thomas Kretschmann
CBS's Pope John Paul II starts Jon Voight