Sunday Cuppa
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Color me intrigued by the potential of this film in asking really important questions about life and internal debates. And possibly shedding some needed light on a very shrouded religious sect’s history:
The project was initiated by a member of Opus Dei, is partly produced and financed by the group’s members and has enlisted an Opus Dei priest to consult on the set. News of the project has set off criticism among some former Opus Dei members that the movie will be little more than propaganda for the organization. But Mr. Joffé, in the first interview he has given about the film, said that he had been given complete creative control and that Opus Dei never had any influence on the project.
He ditched the script he was originally given, he said, because he did not want to make what he called a “biopic” about Escrivá’s life. But, he added, he was intrigued by Escrivá’s ideas about the power of forgiveness and the capacity of every human being for sainthood. Opus Dei — the name is Latin for work of God — teaches that ordinary work can be a path to sanctity if the believer maintains a demanding regimen of religious practices intended to achieve holiness.
And yet? I’m skeptical about the "full creative control" from financial backers.
Does that smack of set up for contrived public protest and victimhood if the film isn’t sufficiently reverential of its subject to anyone else?
Anyone heard anything about this film?
I loved the shades of gray and bleak honesty of Joffe’s prior work in "The Killing Fields." Would love to see some of that on this subject matter, good or ill, as well.
I haven’t heard anything about this film, but after reading your link, I’m also intrigued. I don’t go to the movies very often. Actually, it’s been years, but I would go see this one. I know that a lot of folks are just turned off by religion and I can understand why, especially with the fundamentalist influence on government.
I’m reading a book right now by retired Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong, Jesus for the Non-Religious: Recovering the divine at the heart of the human.
He says in the book’s preface “Dietrich Bonhoeffer once called on the Christian world to separate Christianity from religion…will find a way through the human Jesus but beyond the confines of religion….”.
I just find this kind of thinking so inspirational.