You know how it is when you’re elected Pope and you just can’t handle the responsibility? We’ve all been there. We Have a Pope opens with the funeral of the outgoing pontiff, and the election of another. We’re treated to a peek into the inner sanctum as the cardinals cast their votes for the new chosen one.

Thousands are gathered in St Peter’s Square, like on Groundhog Day, waiting for the Pope to pope out and see his shadow and usher in another two thousand years of darkness and oppression. But this Pope can’t handle the enormity of being THE POPE, and being responsible for a billion unquestioning followers, so he legs it off and hangs out with some actors for a while, and generally popes around the place. 

The film was billed to some extent as an ecclesiastical Analyse This; a light-hearted comedy about the wacky interplay between a psychiatrist and his unlikely patient. 

The film’s director, Nanni Morretti, plays the best psychiatrist in Italy, who is summoned in to the Basilica to sort the Pope’s head out. However, after only one brief counselling session, he ends up being sequestered alone with the bishops while the Pope is on his unauthorised sabbatical.

The film then mostly deals with the complex relationships between a community of celibate men who wear capes of red velvet and white lace netting (made from curtains?) as their everyday attire. Which mostly consists of meals, and games. The film concludes when the Pope returns just in time to score the winning point in the all-priest volleyball tournament. Just kidding, they actually had to abandon the game due to time restrictions.

The whole film seemed quite surreal to me, but since I’m unfamiliar with the workings of the inner sanctum of the Catholic Church I’m not sure that that wasn’t an entirely accurate depiction of what goes on in there.

I found it unusual that a staunchly atheist director, brought up in super-Catholic Italy would have made a film about a Pope, and not brought any politics, corruption or even a message into it. The film is entirely about an overwhelmed man, who has had a situation foisted upon him that maybe no one can be psychologically able to handle.

The closest the film comes to saying something with meaning is when the psychiatrist is being ushered into the Enclave for his meeting with the Pope, and a cardinal informs him that according to the Church, the sub-conscious and the soul can’t co-exist. So by even admitting that a psychiatrist can help the Pope, they’ve undermined most of their principles. Yay! Not an incredibly damning blow though, considering it’s fiction.

We Have a Pope is a pleasant meander through the madness of organized religion, but its refusal to deal with deeper matters renders it, like life, ultimately pointless. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth it! 7/10

Tanya Branagan