Visions, Miracles and Symbolism: The Young Pope

Depending on your beliefs, religion itself can be considered a form of magical thinking. What makes The Young Pope one of the best television series is its willingness to lean into controversy by conjuring up a present day, fictional Pope

Pius XIII, née Lenny Belardo (Jude Law); although he’s the former Archbishop of

New York, we discover by the end of the pilot that he’s agnostic—and very possibly an atheist.

From the start, the series plays with our expectations of papal traditions and legacy. This pope is an outlier who literally crawls out of a sea of newborn babies in what appears to be Saint Mark’s Square in Venice… into the Vatican, ready to shake things up. But first he needs to separate delusion from reality. As a vessel of God’s will, Lenny wants to honor the sanctity and responsibility of his role, but there are too many voices in his head, too many advisers, and he may or may not be seeing things.

1 If you were expecting The West Wing or even House of Cards in Vatican City, you’re in for a quite an awakening. I’m told that Paolo Sorrentino, the creator/ showrunner of The Young Pope, envisions the series as an anthology, so you might anticipate Season 2 introducing us to an entirely new pope and new cast

—True Detective and Fargo (the TV series) style. Imagine the possibilities.

In Season 1, there are several examples of how magic realism elevates the storytelling into the realm of Anything Can Happen.

The pilot starts with a dream within a dream. The first is Lenny crawling out of the aforementioned pile of babies—which foreshadows orphaned Lenny’s pain over his parents. The second dream is his first address in Saint Peter’s Square in

Rome, where he says the opposite of what he stands for later.

There are other “dream sequences” which are never clearly defined as such. In

Episode 5, Lenny as a grown-up watches his hippy parents take off in a boat in

Venice. No context is given to know if he’s dreaming or imagining it. In Episode

7, he meets them again in Saint Mark’s Square and the three of them hug. Right after that, we come back to “reality,” as Lenny watches a painting of a man breastfeeding a baby and his nose bleeds. In that same episode, adult Lenny

2 and kid Lenny meet on the streets of Venice before their parents. Again, no context, a “gray” sequence.

Lenny performs three miracles, which we are led to believe actually happen. In

Episode 4 he prays to the Virgin Mary alongside infertile Esther (Ludivine

Sagnier) and Peter (Biagio Forestieri) as they have sex. In Episode 5 we find out that she finally managed to get pregnant. It’s Esther who believes it’s a miracle.

Lenny denies it.

In Episode 8, Lenny kneels in front of three trucks and begs God to deal with

Sister Antonia (Milvia Marigliano), the corrupt nun. Soon after, we see she collapses and dies. In Episode 9, Lenny reveals to Cardinal Spencer (James

Cromwell) that he prayed for his childhood friend Billy’s mother, and we see her miraculous recovery. It’s a long scene, where light is used to portray the miracle.

Lenny has visions that are not clearly defined as such. Sometimes we know he’s watching, sometimes they happen around him. In Episode 8, Lenny smokes a cigarette by himself in the Summer Palace gardens. Behind his back, seven naked women show up among the bushes, the letters B-A-S-T-A-R-D painted on their chests. It is previously mentioned that there had been riots with the pro-

3 abortion movement Femen, but Lenny never interacts with the women. It has no consequences.

In my view, the anomalous kangaroo also represents an example of magic realism. Lenny accepts the kangaroo as a present from Australia in Episode 2 and releases it in the Vatican gardens. During the season, the animal shows up many times; Lenny is obsessed with making it jump on command. He accomplishes this in Episode 6 and soon after it is seen shot on the garden stairs. We never know who shot the kangaroo or why—or if this really happened.

Episode 4 ends with the Prime Minister of Greenland dancing to an Italian song.

It’s never specified whose point of view is it or if it’s all Lenny’s imagination.

The show is rich in symbolism, which overlaps with its use of magic realism. A particularly memorable example is from Cardinal Gutierrez’s (Javier Cámara) friendship with an obese dying woman at a hotel in New York, in Episode 9. She spends the whole episode in bed and at last decides to be carried out of the building in her bed, by a crane. I think the image of a lady in a bed flying in mid- air is as magical as the show gets. Clearly, she represents a metaphoric angel in

America.

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