(Entrada llarga, per compensar que fa dies que no penjo res).
Fa temps que es va parlant, ara sí, ara no, de la propera pel·lícula de Roland Joffé, There be dragons. És i no és una pel·lícula sobre sant Josepmaria. Així ho descriu la web de la pel·lícula, que té guió també de Joffé:
While researching the life of Josemaria Escriva, the controversial founder of Opus Dei, the young journalist Robert uncovers hidden stories of his estranged father Manolo, and is taken on a journey through the dark, terrible secrets of his family’s past…
Going back in time, we see that Manolo and Escriva are childhood friends, and both face the hardships and injustices that are tearing Spain apart. But as young men, their paths diverge, and while Escriva pursues a life of faith, Manolo is swept into the brutal and tumultuous Spanish Civil War.
Once a soldier, Manolo becomes obsessed with a beautiful Hungarian revolutionary, Ildiko, who has joined the militia in pursuit of passion and purpose. But when Ildiko rejects him and gives herself instead to the courageous militia leader Oriol, Manolo’s jealousy leads him down a path of betrayal.
As personal and national battles rage, the characters’ lives collide and their deepest struggles are illuminated. Only then can they face the ultimate choices that will result in tragedy or triumph, and a chance for final redemption.
Joffé en ple rodatge (bevent mate?)
Pot ser qualsevol cosa, des d’un drama de cartó-pedra patètic fins a una pel·lícula com La misión o Los gritos del silencio. Podeu anar a la web oficial per tenir-ne més informació: http://www.therebedragonsfilm.com. En principi, pel que se sap del rodatge, part de la història passa a Catalunya: en concret, a Pallerols, a la Baronia de Rialb (Noguera).
En parlo perquè m’ha sorprès, en les diferents entrevistes que he anat llegint (no tinc cap informació privilegiada: amb Google n’hi ha prou, o si voleu podeu anar a aquesta secció de la web de la pel·li), com capta Joffé l’essència del missatge de sant Josepmaria i el ressò que pot tenir en el nostre món actual. Ho fa des d’una perspectiva agnòstica i, per dir-ho d’alguna manera, de mala vida, però se’l veu sincer.
Teniu la transcripció d’una roda de premsa de fa uns mesos a scriptor.org, un bon recurs per temes culturals. En copio alguns fragments:
(…) After some time and lots of discussion, one of the producers brought me a DVD of Josemaria’s talks. I’d really decided I didn’t think I wanted to do the project, but I put the DVD into a player and, while I was writing my letter of “Thank you, but no,” I watched a bit of Josemaria speaking, and there was a moment that I thought was extraordinarily impressive where he’s addressing a very large crowd, maybe three thousand people, in Chile or Argentina, I’m not really sure where. And a girl, a rather beautiful girl, puts her hand up at the back and has a question. And he asks what the question is, and she says that she’d like to convert. And Josemaria, with a sort of rather gentle smile says, “Of course,” you know… “What’s the problem?” And, she says, “Well, there is a problem, because my parents are Jewish.” And without batting an eyelid, Josemaria just said, “Oh, my dear, oh, no. Loving your parents, honoring your parents is absolutely close to God, and if this causes your parents any worries, it’s not God’s intention at all. If God’s in your heart, that’s absolutely sufficient, but no no no, don’t do anything that’s going to upset your parents.” And this was such a human warm reply that I actually changed the letter I was writing into a piece of screenplay, and I wrote a scene where something similar happens and, of course, by the time I’d done that, I was hooked. And then I wrote to the producer and said, “Look, I was to writing to you to leave me alone, and… if you’ll trust me, I’ll do my utmost to write something interesting. Because I think there’s something very special going on here, and I’d like to have a go at it.”
Sant Josepmaria a la peli
Sobre el punt de vista cristià de la vida i la comunitat:
The extraordinary thing about Christianity is that, in actual fact, it’s not a judgmental religion. It’s a religion that says, you are frail because you are human, but you are a human created by the divine. Therefore your frailty is part of your journey. And I think that, one of the things that I would be fascinated to discuss in the movie is the whole question of judging others. How do you judge another human being? Can you judge another human being? What’s the point of judging another human being? The question is, what life journey is each human being on? And what life journey are we on when we find forgiveness for the way human beings behave? And I think that, for any community, that’s an extremely important thing to discuss. Because what binds community together is the way in which a community understands that nobody is perfect and that imperfection is part of what we’ve been given as human beings. And our striving for perfection can be a beautiful thing, but it has to be done in a very humane and loving way. And one should never abandon love and, I think, that idea of discussing with your community their idea of judgment and love and what they actually mean. And think about that in family terms. Think about that in terms of your children; think of that in terms of your spouse. Thinking of that in terms of your community is extraordinarily important. Combined with the idea that nobody in Christianity is outside. You are not excluded in Christianity. You are constantly offered the chance to arrive at the point in which you understand and accept redemption. And that’s extremely important. So I think that you would discuss with your community the idea that there is no end to this journey. It’s a continuing journey; it’s a journey in which each person is finding their own route. But it is a journey in which even your failures are part of the journey, and if they can be seen in that way, they’re constructive and creative. I think that’s extraordinarily interesting. And I think very very healing for a community to discuss.
El dolent de la pel·lícula, evidentment
Tal com parla Joffé es veu ben clara la idea de com l’esperit de l’Opus Dei pot servir a la gent que no és de l’Opus Dei per tirar endavant en la vida.
And let’s face it, a “saint” simply means a hero of the Church. In what way was he a hero? I think it was in this way. That very early on, he decided that loving God was a key to living a rich and full life. Very early on, he discovered, he felt, that that was something that needed to be shared. But it needed to be shared with humor, and it needed to be shared with something that’s extremely important to him, which was the idea that it needs to be shared in freedom. See, Josemaria’s feeling was never that you set up an organization and everybody has to think the same. His idea was that you set up a relationship between human beings which is based on the love of God, but that you say to each person, “God himself gave you something which is extraordinarily important which is the idea of choice. So constantly in your life you’ll be faced by choices. There is no life that can exist without choices. And the choices you make are going to be complicated and may not be… – they may not be exactly what you’d expect. But you have to go through those choices with your own acts of conscience.” So Josemaria would never say, “You must do this.” He would say, “How does it fit in with your spiritual development? This is what I’m here to discuss with you. This is what we’re here to discuss with you. But what you actually do is how you come to terms with your own conscience and your own sense of who you are.” And in that sense, I think, what he was saying to everybody was, “Look, we’re all in the same boat. We are all offered choices.” Every minute of the day, we’re offered a choice. Should I do A, or B, or C, or D? Some choices bigger than others. Some choices more shocking than others. Some choices are shattering in their potential power. But, each one a choice. And each one teaching us something about ourselves and, most importantly, about other human beings.
Joffé també parla de l’amor i dels amors. I conclou:
A spider’s web leads you to the same center. And all these different strands of love that look so different will in the end come together and back to one fundamental question which I think is, “Do I love this more than myself?” And that’s a wonderful question. But loving something more than yourself – if that’s not attached to some divine other – it may raise its own set of problems. And it’s not for me to say what those problems are.
Com es planteja la fe un agnòstic com ell? Doncs des del punta de vista d’allò que fa la vida plena i bella:
I think very few movies dare address the question of the divine. In fact, people think I’m mad, and there’s certainly one English newspaper that’s said “Joffe’s gone mad,” thinking he’s going to do a movie about God. And I think that’s highly amusing. Why we would be considered mad because we think that there’s a God, but sane if we think there isn’t, I can’t understand. They’re both mad, and they’re both sane. The fact is, we have no idea, until we really think about it. But if you think about it… it seems to me that there’s a beauty in the idea that there’s a Creator and the idea of God that’s lacking in the idea of… – the kind of existential idea of the world which suggests that there’s nothing but us human beings. So it seems to me, if one can take the choice, why not take the choice that offers the most beauty and the most richness in human experience; which religion in many ways has shown us that it can do. But, of course, religion is mitigated through human beings. It’s not always going to be right. And all human beings are capable of severe wrong. But you know what? When you judge the whole of human experience, that’s what it has in common. But religion offers something else still. I mean, particular religion. It offers us the idea that there is something other than us, and we are not only the measure of ourselves. And that that measure of us is more glorious and more extraordinary than we can imagine. I think that’s not a bad illusion, if it is an illusion to have. And if it’s the truth, that’s pretty wonderful.
La parella guerrillera
I la millor (té el seu humor, en Roland): quan li pregunten “are you a puppet in the hands of other forces?”, respon:
Am I a robot manipulated by all those occult behaviorists in Opus Dei who can produce anything that they want? Actually, it’s an extremely good question, and I suppose you’ll have to divide it into two parts. The first part one would say is: “Why are people so worried about Opus Dei?” Can’t fully explain that. I’d have to say they’re worried about almost everything. Two hundred years ago, it was the Jesuits. One hundred years ago, it was the protocols of Zion, and it was the Jews. For some people, it will be groups of Muslims. Look, it is part of human nature to decide that all the ills of the world are somehow the responsibility of some group. Actually, what I think that is… – it’s our way of dealing with our own malevolence. In other words, actually, we all know that we have good and bad sides of us, but we don’t really like to admit our bad sides. At least, I certainly don’t. So I think it’s awfully easy to somehow suggest that our bad side is really some group that’s got together that’s doing something horrible, and that’s really what’s making the world so horrible. It’s rather primitive, but that’s the way it works.
(…) When you understand the structure of Opus Dei and you understand Josemaria, you understand, A) there is no political side to Opus Dei. Opus Dei is not political. It has no political organization. There is no Opus Dei view of anything, because each Opus Dei member is considered to be an individual in their own right. And individuality was incredibly important for Josemaria, who believed that each individual took his own spiritual path to God, and sometimes Josemaria might say and, indeed wrote this, I sometimes see people making catastrophic decisions, but it’s not for me to tell them that those decisions are catastrophic. They have to learn what those decisions might be in their own relationship with God. Obviously, an organization like that is hardly going to be an organization that’s somehow manipulating the world. Sometimes people think that Opus Dei is very wealthy. Well, I suppose in some senses it’s got some wealth, but you can compare it to other Catholic or Christian organizations, and it’s not particularly wealthy at all. Some people see it as influential. Well, how could it be influential? I suppose it could be influential in the Church, but then… I thought maybe it was, so I went and I checked out how many cardinals were in Opus Dei, and I think there may be one. Maybe there might be none, by now. How many bishops out of the three hundred or so bishops that there are? I think two or three. There’s no way in which Opus Dei could be said to be influential in the Church beyond any other organization, although all organizations obviously vie for some degree of power in the Church. Of course, that’s normal. So, I just think that it’s a mistake. I just think it’s a mistaken thing that people kind of feel happy about. And certainly insofar as I was concerned, when I wrote it, I said to the producers, one of whom was an Opus Dei member, “Will I be free to write what I want?” And he said “Any reason we’re coming to you is to offer you to write what you want.” And I said “Even if it’s critical?” And he said “Even if it’s critical.” And I said “Even if it has a scene where somebody says that God is bad?” And he said, “Well, if that’s a good scene, then you should say what you want.” And, indeed, there is a scene in the movie that asks that question, and nobody suggested that it shouldn’t be there. So if I am a robot, they’ve certainly worked very well.
Suposo que el nombre de cardenals i bisbes fa referència només a Estats Units :).
Hi ha més declaracions, però ja no m’allargo…
Aquest blog vol donar una resposta -absolutament personal i no oficial- a les preguntes que la gent es fa -i ens fa- sobre l'Opus Dei, tant en general com respecte a Catalunya.
De l'Opus Dei a Catalunya 
El que comenta la gent