This is an excellent and very powerful film, which greatly impressed me. The review which follows contains some limited SPOILERS.
This is an adaptation of the bestselling novel "Shoes of the Fisherman", written by Morris West and published in 1963. The film, turned five years later, is very faithful to the book. Action is situated in the 80s and the story begins when an Ukrainian catholic priest, Kiril Lakota, Archbishop of Lvov (Lviv for Ukrainians), is released after spending twenty years in one of Soviet concentration camps. Soviet government "authorises" him then to "leave the country" - which really means that he is expelled and banished from Soviet Union. After reporting to Vatican, he is received by the Pope who welcomes him warmly and creates him Cardinal.
Then, soon after, the old Pope dies and a long conclave begins - when in the same time the tension between China and Soviet Union brings those countries to the edge of war, which risks to inflame the whole planet... As you can see it at on the cover of DVD, Cardinal Lakota will become Pope, to the greatest surprise of the whole world ("It is the Russian! They've elected a Russian Pope"). Most of this pretty long film covers the very eventful, dramatic and even tragic first weeks of his pontificate.
This film contains many treasures. The conclave part is an extraordinary thing to watch, probably the best representation of this unique event ever shown on the screen. Dialogs are of the highest quality. There are also some extremely moving and beautiful scenes.
Anthony Quinn is of course the main star in this show and he proves here once again that he is a real Hollywood giant. Before this film he already played (amongst others) a Greek commando soldier, a French general, a US Marine, a Philippino guerilla, a Spanish conquistador, an American gunfighter, an Inuit hunter, an Arab sheik, and also Kublai Khan, Attila, Barabbas, Gauguin, Osceola, Zapata, Quasimodo and of course he was also Zorba the Greek and he starred in the immortal "La Strada". Here he is simply perfect as a very great and exceptionnally wise Pope...
Two other actors seconded him in the most excellent way. Austrian actor Oskar Werner plays here a brilliant theologian, Father Telemond, who is however going in his reflections very far from the official line of the Church - and he is great in this role. Australian actor Leo McKern (Number Two in "The Prisoner" series) plays the crucially important character of Cardinal Leone and he does even better. Finally, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Vittorio De Sica appear in smaller but significant roles.
Being a Roman-Catholic myself I found the respectful approach to Christian faith and Catholic Church a very pleasant thing and a welcome change from the usual Catholic bashing in most of more recent films. As the title of this review (which is a citation from the film) indicates, living one's faith is a great challenge, priesthood is a life of duty and never stopping service to others - and so becoming Pope is to combine those two things at the highest possible level of difficulty...
This film can also be seen as a quasi prophecy about the election of Pope John Paul II in 1978: he was also coming from the Eastern bloc, his election was a total surprise, he improved the relations of the Church with the Jews and also in many other ways his pontificate was dramatic and very exceptionnal.
If there is one thing that is rather weak in this otherwise great film, it is the description of the crisis which threatens world peace and a very naive vision of both Soviet and Chinese leaderships. Also, the "great solution" the Pope invents at the end is, in my private opinion, an extraordinarily naive and pretty stupid thing... But this is of course matter to discussion.
To conclude, this is a very good, very moving and very powerful film. I enjoyed greatly watching it and I am keeping my DVD preciously. Enjoy!
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