Page 42 Daily Mail, Friday, September 6, 2019
it’s friday!
Hopkins and
Pryce are top
of the Popes
FELICITY JONES shows her manpower in
director Tom Harper’s air balloon drama
Aeronauts. Jones told me her role was originally
meant for a man. In the film, which also stars Eddie
Redmayne, she does all the heavy lifting and
climbing over the balloon. Jones joked that she
likes it when a woman ‘saves the day’. So do I.Bale’s a blast around ’60s racetrack
It will be released in cinemas in
November and streamed on Net-
flix in December.
Though the film charts the
crisis each man faced, it’s full of
humour. When Benedict first
meets Francis, the football-lov-
ing Latin American is heard
humming a tune. Benedict
assumes it’s a hymn, but Francis
says it’s Abba’s Dancing Queen.
‘It’s a look at modern-day
politics and modern-day reality,’
Pryce told me over lunch in
Telluride, in the Rocky Mountains
of Colorado. He and Hopkins had
worked together on a recordingof Under Milk Wood, but it took
producer Tracey Seaward and
Meirelles to reunite them.
Hopkins, a keen pianist, tickles
the ivories in some scenes. ‘Put
Tony in front of a piano and he’ll
keep playing; put me in front of
a mic and I’ll start singing Fly
Me To The Moon. I had to resist
singing while Tony was playing,’
said Pryce, who’s about to begin
previewing Florian Zeller’s play
The Height Of The Storm with
Eileen Atkins on Broadway.
The Two Popes uses some
dramatic licence, but McCarteninsisted his script was based on
thorough research. It is well
known that Francis loves
football and tango and is an
advocate for the dispossessed.
Benedict was a harder nut to
crack, but McCarten had inside
information about his love of
Fanta. The father of McCarten’s
girlfriend worked at a Catholic
school in Munich when Benedict
was an archbishop. He came to
dinner and asked for Fanta, say-
ing it was the only soft drink not
banned in World War II and he’d
developed a taste for it.W
HEN Anthony Hopkins
and Jonathan Pryce
were portraying holy
fathers Benedict and
Francis in a new film
the actors, who both hail from
Wales, jokingly called themselves
Two Welsh Popes and Two Popes
Together Again.
The stars of The Two Popes — Hop-
kins plays German-born Benedict XVI
with Pryce as the former Argentine car-
dinal who took over from him — help
turn what could have been a strait-laced
film into one of the year’s best pictures,
blessed with two great performances.
Screenwriter Anthony McCarten
described the film, directed by Fern-
ando Meirelles, as having ‘two iconic
actors going head to head in a debate
that’s a sort of theological smackdown.
It’s about a hardliner coming to terms
with handing the baton to a reformist.’
The movie was the surprise hit of the
Telluride Film Festival and will be
shown at the Toronto International
Film Festival tomorrow, and at the BFI
London Film Festival on October 7.
It’s now a key title in the awards season.CHRISTIAN BALE
delivers a rousing
performance with a
particularly British
touch in superb drama
Le Mans ’66.
It’s the tale of how an
American-based Brit,
Formula 1 engineer
and driver Ken Miles,
and sports car
designer Carroll
Shelby (played by
Matt Damon) raced to
glory after designing
a car built for speed.
The film focuses on
how in the 1960s, Ford,in an effort to sex
up its image, took
on Ferrari on
the racetrack.
Director James
Mangold told me at
the Telluride Film
Festival that Bale
wanted to infuse Miles
‘with a sense of
home’. So he wrote a
list of songs and
phrases to use while
behind the wheel.
‘He liked the term
“giddy-up” and the
song I’m H.A.P.P.Y.’ said
Mangold. ‘He’d goaround the set
singing: “I’m H.A.P.P.Y.
I’m H.A.P.P.Y. I know I
am, I’m sure I am. I’m
H.A.P.P.Y.” Songs like
that helped flesh out
the character.’
Another touch has
Bale jumping out of a
car following a race
and asking if he has
time for a ‘cuppa’ tea.
‘Christian explained
all the niceties of tea-
time to me,’ Mangold
explained. ‘We had tin
cups and boxes of
Typhoo tea.’ It’s anedge-of-your-seat
picture with both
actors on top form,
though Bale’s portrait
of Miles is particularly
sublimely captured.
He’s sure to be on
many award
season ballots.
Le Mans ’66 (known
as Ford v Ferrari in
the U.S.) is screening
at the Toronto
International Film
Festival on Monday
and will be shown at
the BFI London Film
Festival on October 10.Double
vision:
Popes
Pryce, left
(and inset)
and
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