Film 'There Be Dragons' Focuses on Life of Opus Dei Founder
In the 1980s, Father Josemaría Escrivá is being considered for sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church. A journalist, Robert Torres, is covering the story and seeks out his estranged father Manolo Torres, who was a childhood friend of Escrivá, for more information.
“I warn you,” said Torres to his son on the tape recordings he makes, “There be dragons.”
So begins the journey into the tumultuous past of the founder of Opus Dei, Josemaría Escrivá, in the film “There Be Dragons,” written and directed by Roland Joffé.
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In an interview with The Christian Post, Joffé explained that he took on the task of portraying Escrivá’s life on screen due to “a fascination” with his life and work.
“He was a genuinely good person,” said Joffé, who noted that outside of some “rough edges,” Escrivá lacked a dark side to his personality.
Joffé noted both in the movie dialogue and in an interview with CP that many of Escrivá’s views were Protestant-like in their framework.
According to Joffé, Escrivá believed sainthood went beyond an official church classification, in a lack of hierarchy, and in direct communication with God. In talking with people who knew Escrivá, Joffé said that people often talked about “his sense of humor,” “his smile,” and how “he could be tough.”
“He was a genuinely good person,” said Joffé, “he was not linear in his thinking. He was open to many interpretations of the truth.”
Joffé’s film places the secretive Opus Dei in a less villainous role than in recent works like Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code.
“You do not have to be a Christian to join Opus Dei,” said Joffé, who noted that Opus Dei meetings often involved intellectual conversations on spiritual matters.
Another controversial practice associated with Opus Dei is self-flagellation. The film shows Escrivá cutting himself while praying over and over “help me find strength.”
Regarding Escrivá’s self-flagellation scene, Joffé did not believe it was “a form of sadomasochism.”
“In many, many religions discipline is expressed through self-inflicted pain,” said Joffé. “In life there is suffering…this is a valid human experience.”
Joffé looked at the practice not so much as right or wrong but as a way of connecting to the universal human experience.
The Church and Forgiveness in Reconciliation
Though long over, the memories and trauma of the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing Fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco remain a point of discussion and controversy in the modern day.
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI moved to beautify scores of Spanish clergy who were killed in the unrest by government forces. A couple years later, a group of Spanish bishops issued an official apology for supporting the Fascists, even when they killed priests sympathetic to the government side.
Regarding recent conversations and controversies surrounding the Spanish Civil War, Joffé believes that forgiveness “needs to be the driving force.”
“I think the driving force has to be forgiveness,” said Joffé.
“The role of the church,” he said, “should be to constantly review our moral struggles.”
According to Joffé, “the film was well received in Spain,” with many critics saying it was “fair to both sides.”
Forgiveness is a strong theme in the film. Torres learns disturbing things about his past through his fatally ill father, which leads him to struggle with the issue of reconciliation.
Joffé described the act of forgiveness as an “immense extraordinary healing power.”
A Complex Struggle
“They called us Fascists. We called them Communists. Really the war was much more complicated than that,” said the character Manolo Torres in the film.
Both the government side and the Fascist side had several political groups within each that oftentimes had their own agendas.
George Orwell, author of 1984, had served in an anarchist militia that fought against the Fascist forces. In a memoir titled Homage to Catalonia, Orwell wrote that he “accepted the News Chronicle-New Statesman version of the war as the defense of civilization against a maniacal outbreak by an army of Colonel Blimps in the pay of Hitler.”
However, as time passed, Orwell concluded that “inter-party struggle that was going on behind the government lines” was of greater importance to understanding the conflict.
Joffé believed that a lack of understanding for complex conflicts was encouraged by the modern day, when “mass manufacture resulted in industrialized thinking.”
Joffé looked with concern at the “ideological rigidity” that creates “simple answers” for complex issues, believing that the problem “is present in America at the moment.”
There Be Dragons stars Charlie Cox as Josemaría Escrivá, Wes Bentley as Manolo Torres, and Dougray Scott as Robert Torres.
The film was released to DVD and Blu-Ray on Jan. 10 by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.
