"The Young Pope" by Paolo Sorrentino - part 1 - review

Jude Law plays the role of the forty-year-old Lenny Bellardo or the first pope of American descent. The first scene, without a sound, sets the shocking tone of the whole series - as if in a disturbing dream, Lenny crawls from under a pile of sleeping babies and hurried to her sacred cloister, exchanging meaningful smiles and winks with her cardinals. Thus begins the story of the youngest Pope in the history of the Catholic Church - Pius XIII. His victory is the result of tangled Machiavellian intrigues going on in the Vatican, with which Lenny confronted himself immediately after taking office. But the ruins of power and influence in the yard stand out mostly with the peculiar, at times unthinkable, dialogue, and are more like a plot stuffing to justify the brilliant monologues and confessions of the Pope. Jude Law combines his masculine charisma with almost childish charm and uncertainty, and the virgin vestments fit him just like a few other actors before. It will not be surprising if Lenny turns out to be the most advanced image in his career since "The Talented Mr. Ripley". With an unscrupulous eloquent, witty, vain and blatant sense of humor, the young Pope is equally close in his views of the place of the organized faith, to a medieval priest, and to a rock star from the 70s of the twentieth century.

For fans of "Great Beauty" and "Young", it's no surprise that HBO's new series is thrilling from the director's impeccable aesthetics: incredibly composed and stylized scenes, accompanied by a sauntrack ranging from mild electronic synthesizers bursting into unexpected guitars reefs and replaced by the depth of a church organ. Sorentino creates a strange atmosphere of weightlessness, which often degenerates unexpectedly, shocking the senses and turning the excitement awakened by the viewer into unexplained anxiety. Diane Keaton is unrecognizable in the role of Sister Mary, which is a key part of Lenny's story, and helps make it not just persuasive, but lastingly memorable. Sorentino refers to bluish allusions to channel some of the most entertaining elements in the series, a good example of which is the infamous T-shirt "I'm a virgin, but this t-shirt is very old" that Sister Mary carries in the hours, when he is not occupied as a counselor to the Pope. The Young Papa is a fun, refreshingly different series, and many of its features guarantee cult status, and if you have not given it a chance, get ready for a number of pleasant surprises, especially the covert and fearsome first speech that the pope has on his screen in the Vatican.

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