Saints and the Cinema: Fr. Dwight Longenecker on 'There Be Dragons'

As hagiopics go, There Be Dragons is one of the better ones

When I first heard that they had made a movie about the life of St Josemaria Escriva my heart sank. "Oh, dear, not another worthy, but dull movie about a saint!"  But I bit my tongue, for good friends were supporting and promoting Roland Joffe's There Be Dragons and I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt.

P>GREENVILLE, SC (Catholic Online) - When I first heard that they had made a movie about the life of St Josemaria Escriva my heart sank. "Oh, dear, not another worthy, but dull movie about a saint!"  But I bit my tongue, for good friends were supporting and promoting Roland Joffe's There Be Dragons and I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. More about that particular movie in a moment, but first allow me to explain why saints and the cinema don't really mix.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that motions pictures are...errm...pictures that move. The whole medium is visual and active. We go to the movies to see things happen. The story is told visually and actively. Furthermore, the plot is driven forward by conflict. There are good guys and bad guys and both the white hats and the black hats need to be seen and heard. This is the active and visual language of motion pictures.

In the face of this, what is visual and active about the life of a saint? Not much. There is great conflict to be sure, but the conflict is mostly invisible and internal. How does the film director show the inner anguish of the saint? They usually resort to the movie cliche of having the saint talk out loud to a crucifix, and when they do enunciate their inner conflict the typical audience member will wonder why the saint is making such a big deal out of it all. How does the director portray the supernatural joy of the saint? Usually by having the saint swirling about in a field of flowers grinning I'm afraid.

Then there is the villain. Most saints move in a world of religious people so most often the 'villain' is an ignorant abbess, a bumbling bishop or a confused cardinal. They may wear black robes, but Darth Vader they ain't. Consequently the poor screenwriter tries very hard to manufacture conflict to make the movie move, but the bad guys are rarely convincing. In fact, they often seem quite sensible compared to the radical and seemingly crazy ideas of the saint.

There are other sticky problems in bringing the life of a saint to the screen. Because the movie is biographical the screenwriter has to stick to the facts, and life is rarely as dramatic as screenwriters would like it to be. As a result he has to pump up certain events which were not quite so important and develop characters or conflicts for the sake of the plot line--yet do so without doing too much violence to the historical facts.

The final problem for hagio pics is that the main character has to develop. This is why we typically see the flaws of the movie hero in the early scenes and then we see him, through the action of the film, overcome the flaws and become the hero he was meant to be. But that's not allowed with a saint. He or she is a saint, after all, and the bio pic is really a hagio pic. As a result, the greatest flaws we see in saints in the cinema are low level doubts about their calling, and frustration with the failures of others.

As a result of these problems we have catalogues and shelves full of worthy Catholic movies which cost millions to make, but never made it to the mainstream cinemas and are rarely viewed more than once (and even then I wonder if many people make it through the whole thing) Am I being harsh? It gets worse. The movies are often funded by well meaning Catholics who are eager to do something about the 'cesspit of Hollywood' and produce a 'good movie' for once. Sadly, they usually know next to nothing about movies and then, when the movie flops and everyone loses money and the critics hate the film they lick their wounds and say, "I knew it would be rejected. That's just because the wicked, left wing media hate Catholics." No. It was rejected because it was a dull, preachy, overlong, badly acted mediocre movie that had no popular appeal."

Once the movie flops, these Catholics with deep pockets and a desire to fund a 'good movie' will not step up a second time. It gets worse still, for the whole enterprise of 'making good Catholic movies' (which are always about saints) reveals a desperate misunderstanding amongst Catholics not only of movies, but of the media and the arts generally. Movies are not propaganda. If you want to make a movie about a saint make a documentary. The best Catholic movies are fictional works that incarnate Catholic truth within a story that is told visually and actively.

There are exceptions of course. Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons on the life and trial of St Thomas More is excellent in every way.Romero on the life of Archbishop Romero of El Salvador is pretty good. Zefferelli's Brother Sun Sister Moon on the life of St Francis isn't too bad--apart for the swirling through flower fields with St Clare; and Black  Robe about the Jesuit missionaries in Canada was fairly solid.

So what about There Be Dragons? Joffe clearly understood the mine field that movies about saints presented, and found an interesting solution. First of all he set the film in the midst of the Spanish Civil war. Good move since immediately we have the potential for plenty of visual action. Secondly, instead of focussing on the saint he focussed on a sinner. He runs a parallel story between two young boys. Manolo and Escriva.

The first grows up to be a deceitful and duplicitous young man who pursues power, lust and passion. The second grows up to turn away from these things to pursue peace, purity and priestly service. Joffe shows us the saint, if you like, as an alternative to the sinner. It's a smart device and it works pretty well. Unfortunately, it's also a complicated device, and Joffe's storyline is often contrived and complicated with too many minor characters and sub plots.

There are other problems that usually bedevil saint movies. It's harder to play good guys than bad guys. St Josemaria Escriva sometimes comes across as a weak, do gooder spouting religious platitudes, and eventually his own story is swamped by Manolo's. Nevertheless, my final judgment is that the film is a success. I found parts of it genuinely moving and inspiring. It's was worth making, and it's worth seeing. As hagiopics go, There Be Dragons is one of the better ones.

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Fr Dwight Longenecker trained as a screenwriter before becoming a Catholic priest. He has been film reviewer for The Universe and writes a regular column on film for the St Austin Review. Connect with his blog and website 

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