The Young Pope is the television debut of acclaimed film director Paolo Sorrentino, most famous for his Oscar winning film ‘’La Grande Bellezza’’, and you betcha the Young Pope has Sorentino all over it superbly composed, stylized silent group scenes and extravagant shots and scenery.
The series is a joint production of Sky, HBO and France's Canal Plus, and the newly elected and unconventional Pope Pius XIII is played by Jude Law with the supporting cast that includes Diane Keaton, Silvio Orlando, Javier Cámara and Cécile De France.
The story follows a fictional American Pope who becomes the most conservative one the Vatican has ever seen, even though we see him smoking and demanding Cherry Coke Zero at breakfast. Jude Law plays the role of the Pope brilliantly, he is sleek, handsome, vain and bigger than Jesus. He is looking for meaning, as much as all believers, he plays God, at the same time radicalizing the role of the church with very conservative proposals as well as modernizing the belief.
Describing the series, Paolo Sorrentino said, “The clear signs of God’s existence. The clear signs of God’s absence. How faith can be searched for and lost. The greatness of holiness, so great as to be unbearable when you are fighting temptations and when all you can do is to yield to them. The inner struggle between the huge responsibility of the Head of the Catholic Church and the miseries of the simple man that fate (or the Holy Spirit) chose as Pontiff. Finally, how to handle and manipulate power in a state whose dogma and moral imperative is the renunciation of power and selfless love towards one’s neighbor. That is what ‘The Young Pope’ is about.”
The Young Pope is primarily Sorrentino contemplation on the meaning and the "ability to sense" the Catholic faith, the Vatican, the Pope, and, in the end, God himself in these modern times.
SYNOPSIS OF THE FIRST EPISODE (taken from hollywoodreporter.com)
''From that opening sequence with the babies, there is no scaling back of the outlandish. It extends from Law's opening fever dream into a scene where he greets the rapturous crowds at the Vatican with a speech that drives away the rain, produces a blue and sunny sky and then culminates in the most progressive Papal statement in history (pro-sex, pro-masturbation, pro-gay-clergy, pro-nuns delivering mass), complete with slapstick-like fainting and, finally, the revelation that this American pope, named Lenny Belardo, needs to wake up. And he does. But what Sorrentino (The Great Beauty, Youth) has cleverly done with that scene is head-fake the audience. Those faithful Pope fans become, upon hearing this progressive speech, more stunned than happy. Individual shots of them show their disapproval. It makes the television audience believe that the new Pope's views will be too youthful, too American, too untraditional.
But then, in a succession of amusing scenes that take advantage of Law's magnetic and telegenic visage, his ability to do an American accent and his talent for portraying the blunt forthrightness of powerful people, we find out that Lenny Belardo, who will now be called Pope Pius XIII (that should have been a hint), is, in fact, about as conservative as they come. He's aiming, with his reign, to turn back all the Vatican advances that might be deemed progressive, and, going well past that, to root out homosexual priests, make deeply restrictive demands on the 1 billion Catholics around the world and in the process make the Vatican an even more powerful and ominous player in world affairs.''
