Venice 2022: Padre Pio
VENICE 2022Back in 2015, Abel Ferrara made a documentary for Discovery Channel titled Searching for Padre Pio: his journey through the town of San Giovanni Rotondo, uncovering both the story of Saint Padre Pio and Ferrara’s own grandfather. This experience moved him so deeply that he became obsessed with making a movie on the Saint from Pietralcina. This is how the 2022 historical drama Padre Pio came to be: made as a passion project and on a shoestring budget, the film was shot on location in a little over a month.
Ferrara has managed to stay a cult director, never breaking into the mainstream, because of his rebellious attitude and desire to keep experimenting with the cinematic art form. While that may have worked for a niche audience when it came to the surreal Siberia or the dystopian Zeroes and Ones, it is unlikely that it will have the same success for Padre Pio.
The problems of the film are many, starting with the script: instead of working as a relatively straightforward biopic similarly to Pasolini, the story spends less time focusing on the priest’s internal struggle with faith, fighting his inner demons, and more on following a political tale of socialists and communists fighting the post-war fascist regime. A better script would have found a way of connecting the two stories, if not narratively at least thematically, but sadly this keeps these plots completely separate, making for a wholly underwhelming experience.
Much has been said about Shia LaBeouf’s participation on this film, as he stated that it saved his life and made him convert to Catholicism. His performance is admirable and definitely committed, but his take on Padre Pio is one filled with anger directed towards his sinners and himself. His blowouts, while loud and full of snot, are less Marlon Brando and more Tyrese Gibson auditioning for Django: Unchained. The rest of the cast, comprised only of Italians, is less than stellar. Cannot blame them, however, as Ferrara made the baffling decision to have them act in English rather than their native language.
There is no joy in writing it, but Padre Pio is one of the weakest films Ferrara has made in his entire career. From its cheap production value and incomprehensive editing choices (why the need for all the slow-motion with frame interpolation?), to messy storytelling and a lead performance that is more laughable than emotional, this is a film that even die-hard fans of the New York filmmaker will have a hard time defending.