Karol : A Man Who Became Pope

This is a movie that I surely would not have known about, let alone seen, around a year ago.

It is Polish, and about the story of Karol Józef Wojtyła, a strong man of conviction who came of age watching his nation occupied first by the Germans during the war, and the the Soviets after the war.

It was under the Nazi occupation that Karol first truly began to know his calling in life. A priest hid him from the Nazis at a time of need, and during the course of conversation, he refuted Karol's suggestion that what Poland needed more than anything was to remove the Nazis.

The man responded by saying that if you remove only the Nazis, they would simply come back some day, only with another name.

What was needed was to root out the evil that causes people to become Nazis, to join the Nazis.

And it was to this end that Karol decided to devote his life to his faith, and to his church.

Indeed, the Nazis committed some horrible crimes, but in time, they were gone.

But another evil indeed took the place of the Nazis. That would be the Communists, when Poland in effect became a Soviet satellite state. During this time, religion was strongly frowned upon among official circles, and viewed largely as the "opiate of the people".

Karol knew that he had to tread carefully. But unlike almost all of his peers, he was willing to communicate with the Communists, to negotiate with them.

This drew the ire of many fellow church officials - but it netted results. So, Karol had played a risky strategy, but his chess match strategy had paid off. He had earned the reluctant respect and cooperation of the hostile Communists, while church officials recognized how valuable Karol was as a negotiator with the Communists.

Karol then began to lead to more liberalized religious practices and outward shows of faith, but only pushed the envelope far enough so as not to draw an official "response" so to speak, from the government. He was incredibly crafty at this. In the process, he managed to turn the heart of a man who was sent out to serve as a spy against him. This man watched Karol at all turns, and saw that his heart was pure, and the government's intolerance and suspicions of him were unfounded. His guilt ate away at him, until he finally breaks down and admits that he is a spy.

Ultimately, he becomes an ally of Karol for real, and a true believer in the anti-Communist cause, in the cause for greater freedom in Poland.

The movie finally culminates to that moment that we all know about, the moment when he became the surprise compromise pick for Pope. He won, and thus became the first Polish pope, and the first non-Italian pope in more than half a millennium!

This was a well made movie, overall. The English version was so convincing that, at times, it seemed like the actors must have done the scenes twice: once in Polish, and another time in English. i do not believe this to actually be the case, but it was well done.

I enjoyed this movie, and would recommend it to anyone interested in Pope John Paul II (he is remarkably popular in Poland, for obvious reasons), Poland, or the Catholic Church in general. It has historical value, and documents not only the life and times of one extraordinary man, but of Poland during the days when it was a rather hard core Eastern Bloc nation during the time of the Cold War.