By James Mottram and Anthony Frajman
Wim Wenders has made road movies – Alice In The Cities, 1974, Kings of the Road, 1976; noirs – The American Friend, 1977, Hammett, 1988; and bona fide classics – Paris, Texas, 1984, Wings of Desire, 1986.
He’s also made numerous documentaries, with Buena Vista Social Club, 1999 and Pina, 2011 his best-known efforts.
On why he made Pope Francis: A Man of his Word, Wenders says he was driven by a desire to share his “pleasure and admiration” for a subject he believed in.
“My documentary films (aim to) let the things these films (are) about shine as much as possible. I made a film about these musicians in Havana, and you don’t see me, you don’t hear my voice.
“I made it to share the joy and the pleasure that these men gave me, the enthusiasm they had for music.
“(That’s why I think) I was chosen to (to direct the film).
“My impulse is to make a documentary when I love something and I want to share it. And it’s not to see it in the critical light. I want to show it in the best light possible, not to glorify but to share my pleasure and my admiration for it.
“I was ready, willing to make this film, (if) my (autonomy was) respected. And that (meant) it has to be an independent production, I can’t make a Vatican film. I can’t make it a commissioned film. I don’t have that in me.
“And then (The Church) said ‘we never wanted that. We just wanted to put the seed in. And if you go for it, and if you like that, we only want to initiate, you’re going to have to find the money, you’re going to have to (make) the production, you’re going to have to write the concept, you shoot it, you edit it, we will not interfere’.”
A big fear the director had was whether he “had a right to make this film”.
These fears were soon allayed once Wenders met the Pope, who was supportive of the process and humble. “When he came in, I was still nervous when he first entered the room for the shoot; my whole team and I were nervous. After all, the Pope was going to come in through that door. And then a man came, all alone, he came unaccompanied, without bodyguards, without anybody else.
“Seeing a man who is so fearless and seeing him on a daily basis and having actually met him a few times, and having talked for two very intense hours,” settled those fears for Wenders and his crew.
“He came in, looked at all of us in a friendly way, and then started to go around shaking hands with everybody, exchanging a few words, talking to everybody, finding out who speaks what language, and we realised, he wants to show us, he’s just a man like everybody else.
“And that took a lot of pressure out of that anxiety.”
In order to capture the enthusiasm that he felt about the subject with the audience, Wenders even invented a new camera technique.
“I’d come up with a device that he would not talk to me, but talk to everybody. Through me, so to speak. It’s called a reverse teleprompter, so he would see my face, and by looking at me, he was looking into everybody’s face, because I figured if I have the privilege, I want to share it.
“I don’t want to be eye to eye with the Pope and have a camera next to me. And he always looks past the camera.
“I was nervous, how was I going to explain this to him? And they showed it to him, he realised there was a seat and there was a camera, but there was no seat opposite. He said, ‘Where are you going to be?’ I said, ‘well, you’re not going to see me in front of you, you’re going to see this screen in front of you. And I’ll be on that screen. He said ‘And the cameras behind the screen? Where are you going to sit?’
“I said, ‘I’m going to see your face, (we’ll) look each other in the eyes, the screen in the middle between us. By looking at each other, you will look at everybody’.”
Using different tools to direct the Pope not only made the process smoother, it also allowed Wenders and his crew to get more intimate pictures.
“He sort of was glad, because he realised he was not just talking to one person. And he understood it, and he was concentrating on me still, as if we had been one on one, he was really looking me in the eye. He listened carefully. He spoke to me as well, not only as if it was to my face, but as if it was me physically.
“He’d been in front of TV cameras. But this was a film.
“(It) was really very intense, very close,” Wenders added. “And his look was so warm and it wasn’t a show, he (wasn’t) pretending to be looking at me. He was really attentive, he was totally committed, No question was excluded. And his answers were spontaneous; we soon forgot that he was he was the Pope.”
Wenders told us the film isn’t aimed at Catholics, or one audience, but everyone. “I’m not going to make a film for Catholics. Catholics might want to see this film anyway. But knowing Pope Francis, what he stands for and his concerns, he wants to speak to everybody. So I don’t conceive of this film for Catholics as the first and targeted audience. The target audience are people of goodwill. And I told him the target audience are people who have nothing to do with the church.”
Filming inside the Vatican, the director says the Church Abuse scandal was something neither he nor the Pope shied away from.
“When he’s talking about paedophilia in the film, I was shocked at the anger, the outbursts of anger that came out. And you realise, the anger in (it) meant ‘if I could make (this stop) right now.’
“I know his position. I didn’t think that he was going to be so emotional, and that he really got angry, and upset, I realised if only he could, he would go so much further. And of course, we know that he has a lot of resistance in the church and he has adversaries within it.
Pondering whether making the film changed him, Wenders has a simple answer. “If I hadn’t changed by making this movie, I hadn’t really been making it,” the director offered.
We asked Wenders if he could share one film of his with the Pope, would it be his seminal Wings of Desire? “No, I think it would be this one,” Wenders said. “Maybe one day, if he has a spare two hours. I don’t know when that can be.”
Asked whether his next project would be about religion or not, Wenders was characteristically cryptic.
“If I knew, I would tell you.”
Pope Francis: A Man Of His Word is screening as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival
