There Be Dragons: Joffe confirms his greatness as an intense and profound director of the highest quality

By Austen Ivereigh

In an era of ideological conformity the founder of Opus Dei had the courage to tell people to think for themselves, and like Nelson Mandela in South Africa brought healing to Spain, the British film director Roland Joffé told an audience at the Vatican last night.

Presenting There Be Dragons at a private screening of 150 Vatican officials, he said St Josemaría Escrivá – one of the central characters in the movie, which opens Friday in Spain – “answered the question that his time gave him, which is that when politics was industrialising and the world was splitting into rigid opposing camps a young priest stood up in Spain and refused to condemn.”

The movie is set against the background of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) which left half a million dead and continues to divide Spain. In it the young Fr Escrivá tells his followers in the newly-created Opus Dei that they must forgive and not take sides – even against those who are wrong.

In this way, said Joffé, “Josemaría extended what I would call the warm embrace of the Church to people who weren’t Christian as well … We are all in this world together. That was an extraordinary thing to do, and the power of that message I think is extraordinary and relevant to us.”

Among the audience at the Pontifical North-American College were 11 cardinals, eight bishops, 14 monsignori, and 24 ambassadors, as well as representatives from movements such as Focolare and Sant’Egidio with Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans.

Also in the audience were the writer and director Susanna Tamaro and the film composer Ennio Morricone, who composed the theme to one of Joffé’s 1980s epics, The Mission.

After the screening, Morricone said: “With this film Roland Joffe confirms his greatness as an intense and profound director of the highest quality".

Tamaro described the film as “powerful, very well filmed, and dramatically very effective”. By choosing to tell the story of opposing paths taken by two childhood friends, Joffé “brings out the importance of freedom which God gave us to try to reduce the power of evil in the world”.

Tamaro added that the film had the power “to do great good for the new generations deprived of great figures to admire and emulate”.

Joffé told them “it would be wonderful” if There Be Dragons, which premieres tomorrow evening in Madrid and goes on release in Spain Friday, helped the 21st century to be seen as “the century of reconciliation”, in which “we began once again to discover our innate humanity that exists in all of us” and to heal the wounds of the 20th century wars.

He added: “It’s wonderful that President Mandela was capable of doing that in South
Africa, and it’s wonderful to me that Josemaría Escrivá as a young man fought for the importance of that, and carried the Christian message in such a remarkable way that I who am, I confess, a rather wishy-washy agnostic, found myself standing in total admiration and driven to want to do my best for this movie.”

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