There Be Dragons (2011)

Directed by: Roland Joffé | 122 minutes | drama, war, adventure, history | Actors: Charlie Cox, Wes Bentley, Dougray Scott, Unax Ugalde, Olga Kurylenko, Pablo Lapadula, Golshifteh Farahani, Rusty Lemorande, Ana Torrent, Alfonso Bassave, Jordi Mollà, Rodrigo Santoro, Geraldine Chaplin, Alejandro Casaseca, Yaiza Guimaré

Roland Joffé is a somewhat unbalanced director. He was responsible for the brilliant war drama ‘The Killing Fields’, but also harassed audiences with the implausible and exploitative horror bust ‘Captivity’ (starring “24” star Elisha Cuthbert). ‘The Mission’ was another movie with epic pretensions. The film had breathtaking images, Robert de Niro, beautiful music by Ennio Morricone, but was disappointing in content and had a flawed exploration of the main character. ‘There Be Dragons’ unfortunately falls under the lesser part of his repertoire. And then there are no (literal) dragons in the film.

‘There Be Dragons’ is an ambitious film in terms of dramatic reach. The Spanish civil war must be explained, a romantic love triangle within that war must be highlighted, the founding and founder – Josémaria – of Opus Dei must be given sufficient attention, the rivalry between Josémaria and his childhood best friend must be told in a compelling way – as this story runs like a thread through the film – and finally the son of Josémaria’s rival has to make up with his father. And all this within a span of two hours. It is not surprising that Joffé fails to make everything equally understandable and compelling.

Joffé has succeeded in one of his most important goals: to show the humanity and sympathetic disposition of Josémaria and the practical, almost self-evident way in which he approaches life and views his faith. As played by Charlie Cox, Josémaria is such a good, gentle person that you have to embrace him as a viewer, and also feel real fear when – because of his priesthood – he is threatened with death and seen in the street between executions to flee. Perhaps his character should have shown a little more inner struggles – because his sudden self-flagellation in the film now seems a bit extreme – but at least the film has someone the viewer can identify with.

Unfortunately, this does not apply to his (fictional) rival – monotonously portrayed by Wes Bentley – who comes across during the film as a spoiled brat who doesn’t get his way. He always has a cranky, constipated look and shows little of any complexity or depth in his character. And the relationship between him (as an old man) and his son (Dougray Scott) also remains very superficial, with a forced message at the end of the film. Unfortunately, this forced, emphatic sermon occurs more often in the film, which increases the distance between viewer and film.

The events are usually portrayed beautifully and authentically, which is usually the case in Joffé’s films. The chaos of the civil war credibly enters the living room and as a viewer you regularly empathize with the people involved just because of the camera work and the sound design. Too bad the political context is blurry. According to the narrator, it was wrongly seen as fascists fighting communists, but how it really is is not clear.

Despite the many good intentions and good looks of the film, ‘There Be Dragons’ – a title that refers to the inner demons of man – unfortunately fails to keep the viewer interested and emotionally bound to enough characters and events. . Next time, please have a clearer focus, with less fuss around it. Then we could get another unforgettable Joffé film