The Two Popes review, Culture Whisper

Sometimes, it's fun to just watch embellishment fill the screen. Grabbing the basic facts of an event and theorising about how it all went down is often better than sticking to the little truth we know. The Crown is particularly adept at doing this; even tricking people into believing certain fictions actually happened, despite the facts being locked behind well-guarded doors.

Darkest Hour writer Anthony McCarten tries the same with The Two Popes. He delves into the private meetings between the last pontiff Pope Benedict XVI and the current Pope Francis I in the months leading up to Pope Benedict’s shocking resignation and Francis' well-received succession in 2013. McCarten can’t possibly know the contents of these conversations, yet he doesn’t even pretend to be factual. He seems to delight in the not knowing: permitting a lot of entertaining guesswork.

Read my full review on Culture Whisper