Witness to Hope: The Life of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II (2002)

Available on VHS and coming to DVD June 17, Witness to Hope is far and away the best documentary on the life of John Paul II. Based on George Weigel’s definitive biography, Judith Dwan Hallet’s richly textured, feature-length documentary stands alone in its insight into the Holy Father’s inner life. Speaking of other biographers, John Paul II once commented, “They try to understand me from outside. But I can only be understood from inside.” No biographer understands the Pope from the inside like Weigel.

For instance, other documentaries mention that Wojtyla’s mentor Jan Tyranowski introduced him to St. John of the Cross; only Witness to Hope offers any insight into the significance of St. John’s Carmelite mysticism for the Pope. Replete with archival, location and semi-dramatic footage as well as interviews with childhood friends, former students and other acquaintances, Witness to Hope is also artistically far richer than other efforts. Content advisory: Documentary war footage.

A&E Biography: Pope John Paul II — Statesman of Faith (1993)

One of the better screen biographies of John Paul II, Statesman of Faith focuses particularly on the Holy Father’s crusades against totalitarianism and violence.

In interviews with childhood friends, Karol Wojtyla is remembered as the sort of boy who would help classmates with their homework but wouldn’t let them copy his — a boy of whom other parents would ask their children, “Why can’t you be more like Lolek?”

The 46-minute episode vividly captures John Paul II’s energetic, crusading style and the expert brinkmanship with which he wore down his totalitarian opponents. Yet it stumbles in contrasting its positive treatment of his anti-totalitarian crusades with brief, one-sided references to his “insistence on the Church’s strict codes of personal morality,” described only as having “infuriated many Catholics and non-Catholics.”

Here Statesman of Faith has no insights to offer beyond lame comments about Poland’s religious conservatism. Still, it’s worthwhile for its glimpses into the Pope’s personality and its tribute to his role in the nonviolent toppling of the Soviet Union, a revolution with “not a window broken.”

Content advisory: Documentary war footage.

The Jeweller’s Shop (1990)

In 1960, then-Archbishop Wojtyla published two very different works on a topic close to the heart of his thought: Love and Responsibility, his great treatise on love and personhood, and The Jeweller’s Shop, a three-act play poetically contemplating the same subject.

Praised by the Pope as “the best possible film based on my play,” Michael Anderson’s film doesn’t try to capture the play’s unusual meditative form, but extrapolates its soliloquies into a loosely structured drama propelled by ordinary (though philosophically elevated) dialogue. A mysterious character in the play, Adam, becomes a Wojtyla-like priest who takes the young people of his parish on mountain hikes.

In his introduction to the play, translator Boleslaw Taborsky writes: “There are no easy solutions, there is no happy ending. But there is hope, if only we can reach out of ourselves, see the true face of the other person, and hear the signals of a Love that transcends us. To this state of mind and heart we are invited but not browbeaten.” The film also invites us to this state of mind and heart.

Content advisory: Nothing problematic, but children won’t follow the enigmatic story.