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Best movie of this year hands down!

the audience applauded

hyped garbage

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Papacy and its institutions have attracted film makers in many different ways. The Vatican or its clones have been used as sets and stage for many movies in genres ranging from historical movies to crazy comedies. Nanni Moretti's 'Habemus Papam' tries to be more and different. It tries to say something important about the burden of supreme office of the Catholic Church, while telling a story that hesitates between social satire and comedy of situations.A pope is dead, and a new pope needs to be elected. The college of cardinals gets together, doors close, cardinals start the election process. After a few inconclusive rounds, cardinal Melville (Michel Piccoli) is the unexpected winner. White smoke. The pope is to be announced and should bless the crowds gathered in the piazza in front of the San Pietro. However, there is a problem. The new pope seems to have second thoughts. The burden of responsibility? Stage fear? A shrink (Nanni Moretti himself), the best money can buy, is called in help. And then the pope runs away. Maybe he is looking to get back to his secret vocation for acting in theater, repressed in childhood? Maybe he will be convinced to get back, after revisiting his responsibilities?The premises are exceptional for a very interesting film, maybe for more than one. This is actually the problem with 'Habeamus Papam'. Nanni Moretti seems to not have decided which film to make. The characters comedy with the shrink trying to psycho-analyze the pope, and the bunch of semi-idiots with teenager behaviors which seem to compose the cardinals crowd? The situation farce where a member of the guard plays the shadow of the pope to mask the fact that the head of the Catholic church just ran away to try to face real life? The drama of the man facing a huge burden and questioning whether he is ready to undertake it, doubled by the conflict between life as it happens and the deformed reality lived by priests? Each of these succeed to some extent, especially the later due to the superb acting of Michel Piccoli. The ensemble does not work as one movie.

I was a bit disappointed by this film because its beginning was very good, but the film's quality started to decline soon and gradually it became a mess. By the end the film was a complete mess and left a bad taste in my mouth. I was disappointed as the beginning promised much more than it was delivered in the.I was going to this film with different expectations, though, because I expected this film to be more philosophical and to have smarter dialogue. Instead, the film portraits the church as a bunch of idiots. It is a very bland and unoriginal criticism on the Catholic Church. Indeed, today nothing is safer than to beat on religion, a reflection perhaps of the post-modernism of our present days.

This worthwhile film is a comedy the way Romeo and Juliet is: both have some funny moments, BUT...The production values are high and the arcane court ceremony of the Vatican is recreated meticulously--much better than in "The Shoes of the Fisherman". This is as close as most of us are ever going to get to a papal conclave.More remarkably, writer and director have shown realistically the human side of this powerful, devout, celibate world. The cardinals are depicted in all of their enormous ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as in their frailties and strengths, not as a bunch of holy joes but as real people struggling as best they can with huge responsibilities. Yes, some smoke, and they are capable of playing pick-up ball games.The character of the cardinal who is elected, and accepts, but then has a breakdown when cannot face assuming the job, seemed implausible to me at first. After all, he has spent a lifetime assuming larger and larger responsibilities--and he could have said, "No."But it slowly dawned on me that his otherwise unexplained name, Melville--unusual for someone apparently Italian--holds the key to the movie. When his corpulent frame is vested in his papal robes, he is the great white whale depicted by Herman Melville in Moby Dick, and this movie is that story told from the whale's perspective. As Ahab was obsessed in pursuing and catching the whale, this pope frantically tries to escape from the persona that will eventually lead him to his death.

Every comment I see about Habemus Papam seems to focus a little too much on the depiction of the Catholic Church and its figures of authority, maybe because of the title. Let it go, it's not a critical movie of the religious institution, and it's certainly not a mocking of anyone's faith.It is actually a story about a man's confrontation with great responsibilities, set in a very peculiar yet strangely believable scenario.I'd say that the central plot and general feeling of the story could be reasonably translated into a different setting. The Catholic Church replaced with a government, the newly-elected Pope replaced with the newly-elected or crowned leader, etc. Maybe a different setting would fall short trying to depict the seriousness of the situation - can you think of a higher position of authority than that of the Pope? -, and maybe it wouldn't be such a charismatic movie if all the central influential characters weren't light-hearted old men, such as the cardinals in this instance... but it could definitely be done.There are several high points in this movie, most of them straightforward enough that you don't have to be a cinema-nut to appreciate. The acting is terrific, the general quality is comparable with the most hyped Hollywood films (I'm guessing that not needing helicopters, extreme CGI and explosions really helps keeping the budget low). I'm not an 'artsy cinema nut' - and I loved it. (In fact, liking it so much and finding only reviews about it being about 'the Pope' bothered me, that's why I registered to write this review). Anyway, this was different from everything I had ever seen before, and always in a good way. Well, at least never in a bad one! There is indeed some kind of fresh entertainment and novelty in knowing that your finely tuned powers of plot prediction are useless against a storyteller's unusual way of telling an interesting story. I don't even know who this storyteller is, but assuming it is the director Moretti - he did a good job.Maybe a more 'conventional' viewer, if there is such a thing, might be unsatisfied because of the peculiarities - some open ended scenes, even one untied subplot; unexplained character reactions that seem entirely sincere nonetheless. While I noticed these things, they didn't annoy me enough to detract from the general experience. And as long as you watch it without a 'conventional viewer's' mindset and expectations, I can almost guarantee that you will be pleasantly entertained. Let me clarify: don't expect situation jokes. Don't expect an inner journey into the darkness of a hero's troubled dark soul. Don't expect a wacky incarnation of comic relief. And let me repeat this one more time: you don't have to be an 'artsy cinema nut' to enjoy it; just don't expect to be presented to the same old situations and movie gimmicks. It's actually worth a lot more than just for it's quirkiness, but if for nothing else, watch this so you can briefly purge your mind of the sameness that plagues the screens.