At 9 tonight, HBO is debuting a new series about a surprising candidate for high office who shatters the norms of his profession and radically shakes up the institution he was elected to lead. I am referring, of course, to Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Young Pope,” which stars British actor Jude Law as Pius XIII, the first American elected to the papacy.
Did you think I was talking about someone else?
People are going to want “The Young Pope” to be a lot of things. The series has already been a Twitter meme, and once it begins airing, there will be rushes to compare Pius to President-elect Donald Trump, or to draw parallels between Pius’ battles with Cardinal Voiello (Silvio Orlando) and Netflix’s “House of Cards.” I suspect that people who insist on those readings will find “The Young Pope” unsatisfying and not merely because it’s the kind of show that involves a papal kangaroo, hippie ghosts and dance breaks involving the prime minister of Greenland.
What are we to make of Pius, who before he chose his papal name was known as Lenny Belardo?
He drinks Cherry Coke for breakfast and smokes in the residences; he insists on seeing the gifts sent to him; among his first priorities as pope is buying back the tiara of Pope Paul VI; he wears white track suits.
He’s also an orphan, raised by Sister Mary (Diane Keaton), who he brings to the Vatican as soon as he assumes his office; he refuses to pose for photos or to allow the creation of new papal memorabilia, and when he sends Sister Mary to meet with the press, it’s only to tell them that he wishes “to inform you of my indifference”; he was elected as a blank slate but turns out to be a radically conservative figure; he confides in his confessor, Don Tommaso (Marcello Romolo), rather than playing Vatican politics.
But, as is the case with the papacy, the man is subordinate to the office. And while “The Young Pope” has been marketed as a story about what an American might bring to an institution that’s international but still highly Italian, the series is at its most powerful when it’s something far stranger than that.
Sorrentino excels at keeping viewers off-base in the way Cardinal Voiello feels constantly. He composes ghostly, graceful images of nuns at work and play. He knows that choosing simple clothes is one way to convey humility and a distaste for worldly things, but that casually smoking a cigarette while dressed in the grandest possible imperial regalia goes beyond distaste to contempt.
Which is not to say that the questions “The Young Pope” asks are not relevant to us. A sex-abuse scandal hangs in the background of the early episodes, but “The Young Pope” largely concerns itself with more philosophical matters.
The only thing “The Young Pope” has in common with “House of Cards” is that it’s a story about what might happen if Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), who has a few things in common with Cardinal Voiello, found himself playing not politics but an obscure form of intergalactic chess.
“Mystery is a serious matter,” Pius’ mentor, Cardinal Michael Spencer (James Cromwell) warns his pupil. “It’s not some marketing strategy.” I can’t say that “The Young Pope” sincerely gets to the heart of any great mystery. But it’s an uneasy show for uneasy times.
