The concept of mystery is central to the Catholic faith—and to art and storytelling, too. But a good mystery needs hints of a potential resolution to enthrall. The problem with Padre Pio, a new film directed by Abel Ferrara, is an intentional opacity—particularly between two competing storylines—that never resolves, ultimately wasting the audience’s attentiveness.
The movie tells the story of Padre Pio, an Italian mystic and Franciscan Capuchin friar in the Apulia region in the early twentieth century. The true story of the saint’s life, as reported through biographies and Vatican investigations, is full of dramatic material of a kind that could put even the most jaded HBO subscriber on the edge of his seat. The saint, for example, allegedly received stigmata, bilocated, prophesied, levitated, and read the innermost thoughts of men and women, all while two world wars raged around him. Surely, there’s adequate material here for a knockout cinematic experience.
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