Pope Pius IX (Paolo Pierobon, wonderful) has a smile that might freeze a chalice of communion wine at 20 paces. With a peevish curled lip and eyes as onerous and sharp as the purpose of a knife blade, he’s a power-crazed pontiff who, in response to this taut, factually primarily based interval drama by Marco Bellocchio, additionally occurs to be borderline bonkers.
It’s on the pope’s behest that, in 1858, a six-year-old Jewish boy in Bologna, Edgardo Mortara, is seized from his mother and father. Allegedly, the boy was secretly baptised as a Christian by a former maid. Now, in response to Catholic legislation, he’s a Christian for eternity and can’t be raised in a Jewish family. Gaunt with grief, his mother and father petition for his return however meet the immovable wall of Catholic dogma and the desire of an embattled, intractable Pius IX. With stately restraint, Bellocchio manages to place the viewers in an ever-tightening chokehold of rigidity and outrage.
