Two Popes Bridging Fiction and Non-Fiction
For my 59th birthday, I took some time off, got a free Netflix account, and watched The Two Popes, a narrative film with interesting ideas for documentary filmmakers.
The Two Popes explores the unlikely friendship between conservative Pope Benedict (outgoing) and progressive Pope Francis (incoming).
“I disagree with everything you say,” the traditionalist Benedict character says to his future successor.
“While their conversation is marked by deference and decorum,” notes New York Times critic A.O. Scott, “The temperamental and ideological gulf between them seems unbridgeable.”
That bridge by itself was interesting enough, just as Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s trans-partisan friendship with the Judge Antonin Scalia had captivated viewers in RBG (2018).
Even more interesting for editing geeks like myself is the stylistic bridge: the movie blends narrative and non-fiction media.
The Two Popes weds scripted scenes with news footage and even black-and-white journalistic photography.
That’s why a very creative director in Los Angeles recommended I watch it in the first place. We are currently editing his historical documentary.
We plan to experiment with this marriage in reverse, using dynamic black-and-white recreations (“recreas”) and even contemporary news footage to make something that happened fifty years ago more relevant to today’s audiences.
This isn’t a completely novel technique (for example, see The Drug Runner), but I think it will be compelling to young viewers–and even to old-timers. I’ll be recommending The Two Popes to my dad for Father’s Day.
