Pope John Paul II died when I was in the fourth grade. Benedict XVI has been the Pope for the past seven years of my life and his entire Papacy flew by way over the top of my head!
Tonight I watched Karol- A Man who Became Pope, expecting it to be a quick 1.5 hour long movie break.
Nope.
The film was three hours worth of Nazi-Jew drama, revolutionaries, underground resistances,
secret police searches, stingy Russians occupying Poland, cute actors (hello Piotr Adamczyk), heavy Eastern Romanticism, and inspiring love.
I cry a lot in movies. I cry a lot in a lot of movies. I'm sure I cried the most when I watched The Notebook, and I'm sure a lot of other girls will agree and understand how much crying that is seeing how popular of a love story it is. My experience with crying during films was reborn tonight watching Karol, though.
The first 1.5 hours is World War II, and it covers everything that happened in Poland: invasion, diaspora, heartbreak, exterminations, and conversion. Each of these events in the film were so captivating and hovered over heavily romantic music by my favorite film composer, Ennio Morricone. The most powerful aspect of all of these is that the character of Karol Wojtyła always found a way to tie
love into every cry for justice and abandon. How often do we watch World War II films and see a clear message of love in its purest, non-sexual form? Karol's priest friend hears a confession from a Nazi officer, who days later rebukes his superior and is executed as punishment and the priest is shot afterward for having taken that Nazi's honor. Karol himself lovingly dumps his girlfriend in the local chapel to declare that he is joining the monastery. My heart melted.
The second 1.5 hours was the Cold War starting in the '50s, still in Poland for the most part, but with new friends and now Karol is a university professor and a bishop. He still keeps close watch over his ex-girlfriend and her new husband and babies over mail while she's in Brooklyn and also helps out his college kids with fighting the oppression and with finding true love. Now he's also got spies hired by the Russians because
someone's actually out to have Karol removed and killed. The dimensions of authenticity in this film, considering it is pretty much Karol's most powerful teachings jammed into one 3 hour long sitting, are almost endless. I cry out of inspiration and I cry out of empathy for their pain. Most of all though, I cry because I've fallen in love with with God and the notion itself that
love prevails and Pope John Paul II.
I wish I had been older to have met him when he toured the US. I wish he hadn't died in his 80's so that today I'd have motivation to save up for a trip to Brazil to meet him in July for World Youth Day. I've read other people paraphrase his Theology of the Body and Fidel and Ratio and now I'm most likely going to take a crack at the real thing translated. I know that if I could touch just his robe I wouldn't wash my hand and I wouldn't hold back from crying. And to think- there are people who knew him before his priesthood and before his papacy. People who were inspired by him in person and lived on with his lessons on love. To think that college students rallied behind him and stayed for a mass with him and hugged him!
I say "I love [insert composer]" often among other things, but I'm slowly learning to restrain myself and to consider the things that truly inspire me to change to be a new person before uttering the phrase "I love you". People say that old, celibate men have nothing important to say on modern issues of
women's health (italics because I think it's bogus) and
homosexuality but if we truly think about selfless love and Divine love, especially, it's hard to argue with old, celibate men--especially if they're the Pope.
