There Be Dragons

War is Hell.

Here’s another recent movie likely to appeal to Catholics. It is about 50% a biography of St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, and it is duly respectful.  Like For Greater Glory, it has done far better with audiences than with critics, and no doubt for the same reason: critics don’t like Catholicism. However, neither critics nor audiences like it as much as For Greater Glory, and I concur. It is not as good.

It actually has some of the faults For Greater Glory is falsely accused of. The story line is rather too sprawling, and unnecessarily so. There is not enough depth or development given to the characters to really engage with them. And St. Josemaria is actually dealt with too reverently, for my taste. He comes across as a plaster saint, not a living, breathing human. 

The real St. Josemaria Escriva.

This is the most common problem with religious films. It is, I think, a crucial misunderstanding of sainthood. Saints are not people who do not sin; everyone sins. Saints are people who struggle heroically for virtue. In this portrayal of St. Josemaria, we do not see much struggle; it seems to come rather easily to him. He is handsome, he is brilliant, he is always cheerful, he always thinks of others before himself. He once or twice complains of God’s silence, but it never seems enough to make him break a sweat. This makes him hard to identify with; just as Mitt Romney’s apparent perfection makes him hard to like. He seems as though he descended as an adult from Krypton. Saints like this are, unfortunately, useless to the rest of us. 

 In fact, there are no saints like this. If any are, they have not earned sainthood. One must wrestle with angels, as Jacob did; one must work out one’s salvation in fear and trembling, as Paul did; one must slog through the slough of despond, as Mother Teresa did; one must live with the half-tamed lion of one’s overweening temper, as St. Jerome did. There is no personal merit in simply being born with an unrealistically sunny disposition. That’s just annoying.

Charlie Cox as St. Josemaria Escriva.

St. Josemaria’s overall excellence is emphasized, in turn, by contrasting him with a fictional childhood and seminary friend who takes all the wrong turns in life. Bad idea, as it further dehumanizes Josemaria. But at the same time, it dehumanizes his friend Manolo in turn. He is such a reprobate that he is even more difficult to identify with. Besides being an emotionally distant father, and sullen to his friends, he is a spy, a traitor, a slanderer, and a serial murderer. One cannot even get engaged in the drama of the Spanish Civil War, because the protagonists themselves are not really engaged in it. As Manolo himself says, he does not really know which side he is on; and he can walk out of it at any moment he chooses, thanks to a safe passage he carries. He doesn’t care; why should we?

Nice scenery, though. Lots of nice scenery. And one very interesting philosophical conversation, when St. Josemaria is visited by an angel.