

Roland Joffé, director of The Mission and There Be Dragons, calls himself an agnostic, but he seems to be a remarkably God-haunted one.
At a recent press event in Spain, the British writer-director reflected on what drew him to There Be Dragons — a film set during the Spanish Civil War that has predictably elicited media controversy for its positive treatment of St. Josemaria Escrivá, played by Charlie Cox, and Opus Dei, the personal prelature he founded. There Be Dragons recently opened in Spain; the film comes to the United States in May.
“I have no idea whether there’s a God or not, and it seemed to be a fascinating thing to think about,” Joffé explained to a roomful of sometimes skeptical journalists at Madrid’s Villa Magna Hotel. “I’m not a very spiritual person, unfortunately, being a Brit. We tend to go for humor over religion.”
The self-fulfilling humor of the self-deprecating line notwithstanding, the filmmaker easily uses the language of sainthood, spirituality and grace. His British penchant for humor resurfaced as he recounted the reactions of some of his friends to the news that he was doing a film dealing with Opus Dei. “Oh my God, that’s a fascist organization!” was one horrified response he related. “I mean, they slaughtered hundreds of people!”
Joffé’s deadpan rejoinder — “They have? Really? How do you know that?” — was followed by a litany of similarly preposterous charges: that Opus Dei “controls” the Church; that “hundreds” of cardinals and “thousands” of bishops are members; that their membership is kept secret, and so on.
Provocatively tweaking dubious members of his audience, Joffé continued, “The fact is: Opus Dei itself doesn’t really exist. I hate to break this to you, but there isn’t really such a thing as Opus Dei — in the sense of some kind of society with an opinion about something.
“I investigated Opus Dei, and I began to find a very important thing: Opus Dei is a group of people who come together to work on their spiritual life, to work on their relationship to God. But Opus Dei does not have a point of view, other than to say that what you believe you must stand up for — and you must take responsibility for your choices.”
“Beyond that, Opus Dei does not tell people what to think,” he said. “And, in some sense, that’s very beautiful. It’s also shocking to a culture that’s used to large political and ideological groups. Here you have a group that shares some things, but not everything. It’s very difficult to understand. We know that when you belong to a party, most of the time, you’re being told to toe the party line, in one way or another. There isn’t an Opus Dei party line.”
“That means that some people will not like the conservative members of Opus Dei that they meet, or they may not like the liberal members of Opus Dei that they meet,” Joffé said. “But I can assure you that all those sorts of opinions do exist inside Opus Dei.”
In a way, it was Josemaria’s very controversiality that made him interesting, Joffé suggested, adding, “I don’t think an uncontroversial saint is a very good idea. I’m not quite sure how you could be an uncontroversial saint, because … if you are a saint, that means you stand for something.”
What did Josemaria stand for? For Joffé, the key to the saint’s principles was found in his times — particularly the political upheaval of the Spanish Civil War, which the director characterized as an era of “mass production of politics.” Josemaria’s resistance to the ideological pressures of his era, Joffé said, was “an act of supreme courage and grace.”
“Each saint is asked a different question by his period in history, and that question becomes the central thing of his life,” the filmmaker asserted. “I was very struck that, at a time when the world was splitting up ideologically, this man fought very hard for the idea of freedom of choice — not only freedom of choice, but the importance of choice — the importance of owning every choice you make in your life. And making your choices in such a way that you feel proud of them.”
Elaborating on the challenges of Josemaria’s time, Joffé cited ideological polarization, conformity and dehumanization of opponents: “Suddenly, and maybe for the first time in human civilization, we were required to be the Model T of your particular ideology. Freedom of choice was not the issue. The question was: Will you be this kind of human being, acting in this kind of way? And one began to see this sort of division occurring in Spain in an extraordinary way — a precedent for what was going to happen in Europe in the following years.
“And in this moment of time, there comes this young man who resists that pressure, who says, among many profound things, ‘Own your own acts, and never allow your decision-making to dehumanize others.’ That was a powerful thing to do at the time. I admired that message about him. I hope I could be that kind of human being.”
Shifting from political suppression of freedom of choice to scientific denial of free will, Joffé asked, “Though science may try to tell us that we are some result of chemicals and electrical impulses and that we have no free will, what should we do? At the very worst, we have ‘free won’t’ — which means we have decisions about doing something besides not to do it. For all our lives, there will be choice, and there is something about us as human beings that is capable of exercising that choice.”
The capacity for choice, Joffé reflected, was also the capacity for saintliness. “When you think about a saint,” he mused, “you’re not really thinking about a sort of continuum. You’re thinking about lots of acts — lots of times when different things could have been chosen, but certain things were.
“So I felt that, with Josemaria’s life, what I was looking at was a series of choices. And if you imagine those like beads on a necklace, you could say that after many choices have been made, this man was a saint. But it was each individual act that counts.”
Register film critic Steven D. Greydanus blogs at NCRegister.com.
I do not know if this is the correct website. I intend to know how we can organize a showing of this movie in our area, Davao City, Philippines. It seems like this movie will not be shown here as there is no theater that carry a trailer of this movie yet.
Ray, you are so correct. Yesterday I heard “Coincidence is just God working anonymously.” Why does it take us so long to long to realize this?
Dan, great quotes!Thanks for reminding me.
The last paragraph reminded me of a couple of favorite quotations, the first by Aristotle (B.C. 384-322):
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
and the second attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas:
“If we cease to become better, we will one day cease to be good.”
@Terry, There are no accidents with God. He wanted you to turn on that laptop!
This movie review itself fits beautifully into my life and my needs right now. Very late in my life, I am taking RCIA with my first communion coming with Easter Vigil. The ideas presented are ideas that I ponder and ideas I try to present to young people. The great hand of God brought me to sit down in the middle of the day and turn on my laptop which I had sworn not to touch during daylight. I began to play with Facebook and found this movie review. The thoughts presented today together with the movie when it comes out maybe be precious beads on my spiritual necklace.
It’s refreshing to have someone write about Opus Dei in a positive light. Not to make us out to be some crazy sect!
@ X: This article is about Joffe’s press conference in Spain. Barbara Nicolosi’s original script was not a topic of discussion and so it is not treated here. Beyond that, I haven’t read Nicolosi’s script, and while I’m vaguely aware of the controversy, I haven’t followed it or researched it. It’s possible that the subject will come up in my eventual review or in some other article I may write, but I don’t anticipate trying to arbitrate the issue myself.
Hi Steven:
Excellent piece, as always. It’s a revelation to hear the thoughts of a film director who has what might be called, in the words of Earl Weaver, former Baltimore Orioles manager, “deep depth.” Another of his films that struggles with the meaning of life and free will is “City of Joy.” As the protagonist says in that under-appreciated film, “the gods have not made it easy to be human being.” Or to slightly paraphrase William James with regard to day-to-day choices, “The problem is less what action we choose to take but what being we resolve to become by so doing.”
I am looking forward to seeing the new film.
Best regards,
Peter
I have seen a prescreening of this film and it is well made and powerful. But it is about more than St. Escriva. Choices and forgiveness are important. Too bad it won’t be out during Lent. Everyone reading about this film should go see it opening weekend, so it isn’t relegated to dvd sales immediately. I won’t spoil it beyond that.
Joffe’: “Opus Dei does not tell people what to think.”
It’s true that Saint Josemaria and Opus Dei have never taken any position on any specifically political question. What they have always done, however, has been vigorously to support and to shore up the claims of the Church to teach universal moral truths, and the right and the obligation of the Church so to teach. That position of support for the existence of universal moral Christian truth and the right of the Church to teach it inevitably places Saint Josemaria and Opus Dei in opposition to those who propose some other “universal moral truth” (such as, the legitimacy of the violent overthrow of the dominant paradigm in order to liberate the workers, for example) as well as to those who would argue that the Church should shut up and go away whenever her teachings come into conflict with whatever immoral fad our debauched and entitled chattering classes have lately seen fit to embrace.
The debauched worldlings who make up our chattering classes very much wish to tell others what to think; they will resist with all their strength those who would proclaim to the world that they should listen to the Church and be faithful to her. Hence the chattering classes would naturally be the implacable enemies of Opus Dei and all it stands for.
I for one am not especially surprised that a self-professed agnostic was able to “get” St. Josemaria. Though a very Godly man, his most important ideas weren’t so much about God as about life. (To those for whom belief comes easily and naturally, this may seem a distinction without a difference. To those of us for whom it has been more of a struggle, it makes perfect sense.)
Based on what I read, I have high hopes for this film, and for the director’s eventual conversion to the fullness of Truth.
No comment on the interview about the controversy involving various WGA arbitrations after Joffé deep-sixed Barbara Nicolosi’s original script in favor of one he wrote himself, then and claimed sole Written By credit?
@ Dixie Meyers: Mr. Joffe calls himself an agnostic, not an atheist. “I have no idea whether there’s a God or not” is not an atheist sentiment.
@ David S: Yes indeed. I wondered at the time if he might have picked up that image from the film’s Opus Dei advisor, or from some of the other spiritual reading he did while preparing for the film.
That last comment is a beautiful, beautiful one. And if when I read it I replace “necklace” with “rosary” I suppose I can be forgiven :)
I am impressed, that an atheist got Saint Josemaria Escriva’s life. Few Catholics on the left got this saint. So, I am impressed he understood. That is, ipso facto a grace from God.