With three major B’way productions and a classy 1964 Hollywood embalming, Gore Vidal’s facile political potboiler THE BEST MAN, has proved remarkably durable. And damned if it hasn’t shown up again, now at The Vatican. The job on the line no longer POTUS but Pope (THE BEST CARDINAL?), with so many ‘borrowed’ story beats, the Vidal estate might have a case against co-scripters Peter Straughan & Robert Harris. On the other hand, in most ways, they show up Vidal’s shallow offering with deeper characters to take the place of Vidal’s Adlai Stevenson & JFK puppets. Instead, we have doubting Progressive candidate Stanley Tucci and glad-handing Conservative John Lithgow. Lithgow sporting a deliciously awful toupée. Purposefully? (Also an ultra-strict African Cardinal in the running, something that wouldn’t have been thinkable in the ‘60s.) But secrets and reveals all very Vidal, till a pair of twists at the end. (One twist too many say I.) The major change is structural with our POV and dramatic interlocutor moving to Ralph Fiennes’ ‘Dean of Cardinals,’ the guy who runs the conclave with a firm hand and quite possibly a personal agenda. Director Edward Berger holds to a tight color pallette: Off-white, Dark Grey, Papal Red; claustrophobic and very effective. As top nun running things behind the scenes, Isabella Rossellini looks even more like her famous mother (Ingrid Bergman) than she did in her youth, and the whole international cast is as much a treat as the film.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: For more modern Popery, Anthony Hopkins & Jonathan Pryce in THE TWO POPES/’19. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-two-popes-2019.html
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