Deep at the heart of Abel Ferrara and Shia LaBeouf’s collective passion project, Padre Pio, is a good war movie. Not on the level of Downfall or The Lives of Others but a good depiction of revolution following the First World War and the impact it had on the lives of ordinary Italians. Should that have been the focus, Ferrara would have had an interesting political thriller on his hands. Instead, he and LaBeouf, who portrays Saint Padre Pio, attempt to carve out a space for the Transformers and The Peanut Butter Falcon star to display a return to the big screen. His route to the stage once more after a failed return just a couple of years before. Reformation is at the heart of not just Padre Pio but the cast too, which Ferrara and company fail to justify beyond the occasional great line or interesting visual moment.
Gone are the experiments of the past, Ferrara has found a strangely adequate pastiche that occasionally mocks itself with horrific slow-motion shots and thick dialogue. Ferrara and Maurizio Braucci must be praised for their bountiful script, which is an elation of religiously heavy material, occasionally battered by their decision to use modern American linguistics. What happens in turn is a modernisation of Padre Pio, and like it or not, LaBeouf is the representation of that. Grand lines that muse on the sanctity of faith and the power of priesthood are touching and explore the concepts well but only occasionally so. They stick in the mind, LaBeouf declaring that one parishioner should be “grateful I am not God” is a stunning scene deflated by an outburst the equivalent to that of an Americanised crying fit in a budget TV show.
Yet it is LaBeouf that holds his own, that is, in part, the lead issue of Padre Pio. He is far and away from the revolution. By the time the rise of socialism has swept up the civilians and pushed head-on against the old hands and war horses that have returned from a battering, Padre Pio is about ready for its end. It leaves its eponymous man behind; he is a crutch for the religious theme at the heart of a revolution. The blood of revolutionaries is in contrast with the blood of Christ. A beautiful portrayal of revolution is deep within the heart of Ferrara’s work here, it just feels deformed and removed from what he hopes to showcase. His passionate depiction of Padre Pio is confused and unable to confirm his or LaBeouf’s belief in the power of his words and actions. But beyond that failing, there is some good to come from this piece that, as a work of solely political and historical magnitude, settles well as
Ferrara tackles the futility of patriotism in the face of dawning revolution, the need for social change and the desperate layers that bring that replacement to light. A visually stunning piece with lighting that echoes a range found in Siberia, but without the craft behind it. Attempts to comment on the tides of war and the reasoning for embracing systems and powers far removed from the social norm are discovered and addressed, but not understood. LaBeouf could be working on an entirely different narrative to the one which Ferrara focuses on, the excuse clearly that Padre Pio never did meet with many revolutionary Italians. Whether he did or not is no excuse for how much heavy lifting LaBeouf must conjure to work this sloppy piece, charged by passion and desire.
