'The New Pope' Episode 6 intertwines the sacred and profane as Pope John Paul III falters and lets evil in
The sacred and the profane are intertwined tightly in Paolo Sorrentino's 'The New Pope'. If the gyrating nuns in front of the holy cross weren't enough of a clue, you have the figure of Esther (Ludivine Sagnier).
Since the beginning of this season, Esther has been dealing with becoming the "sacred whore". As she gives "human warmth" to the deformed boy who has never touched a woman in his life, his rich mother gives her money and her thanks. "You're a saint," she tells her.
When Esther shakes her head furiously, saying she is nothing better than a whore, the mother tells her what separates a whore from a saint. "Nothing," she intones and says Esther can provide the same services she has provided her son to others like him with rich mothers like her.
In a sequence, which shows Esther embracing her role as the saintly whore, she cradles the deformed boy in her arms in a way that is more maternal than it is sexual. Lenny, in spectral form, hovers over the scene as if giving it his blessing.
But at the sight of this "love" Esther shows to her boy, the mother curdles with envy and dismisses her. As long as it is sex, she was ok with it. But love, according to her, is "dangerous". Earlier, in Episode 3, Pope John Paul III (John Malkovich) had said something similar about all the Church's worst problems like sexual abuse and pedophilia were "distortions of love" which occurred whenever passion entered the equation instead of a detached "tenderness".
Esther too realizes this as she chokes the mother to death before fleeing, leaving behind the devasted boy behind who howls his agony. Lenny aka Pope Pius XIII (Jude Law), however, hasn't forgotten her because in response to her appeal to make her hands stop so that she doesn't commit this crime, he seems to bring the mother back to life with a single raise of his finger while still in a coma.
By the end of the episode, Esther is outside the ICU begging for forgiveness for taking pleasure in giving the love to those who needed it. In the meantime, as Pope Pius XIII's sighs are getting more frequent and at the end of the episode, the candle in his room goes out and so do the lights. Does it mean death or a reawakening, we will have to wait for Episode 7 to find out.
Things are not going as well with Pope John Paul III aka John Brannox. He had already let corruption into the Vatican, succumbing to blackmail, to hide his leech addiction (a habit he seems to have acquired from his brother Adam, according to a significant flashback). Cockroaches make their appearance in this episode to symbolize that the rot has taken root.
Sofia's (Cécile de France) husband, Tomas (Tomas Arana), has already made a "sordid" club which includes him and the Pope's "Personal Secretary" Cardinal Spalletta (Massimo Ghini), who poisons the fragile Pope's ears against Cardinal Voiello (Silvio Orlando).
A particularly sinister figure is Leopold Essence (J. David Hinze) with an eye patch, who has the aforementioned cockroaches crawling out from his sleeve. He tells Sofia he is the second most intelligent man in Rome, thwacking a caramel custard with a spoon, making a disgusting sound that leaves you feeling unsettled.
He also leaves a cockroach in Sofia's car to shut her up after she discovers that her husband and Spalletta have been sleeping with the same underage girl, besides using the Church as a cover for laundering money.
Voiello tries to take these concerns to Pope John Paul III. But Spalletta, with a combination of veiled blackmail about his leech addiction and warnings about how Tomas is keeping the Italian government from taxing Church's properties and keeping the Church from financial ruin, keeps his place beside the Pope.
Instead, Pope John Paul III passive-aggressively asks Voiello to quit to resolve the power struggle. Voiello, who is no less of a sinister tactician himself, is too pained by the Pope's rejection to use Bauer (Mark Ivanir) to clear his way again.
Instead, he ties up loose ends, sending Cardinal Hernandez to Kabul, away from Rome and power, for his hand in covering up sexual abuses. His most touching moment comes in his conference with the nuns.
He knows all their secrets, including the nun's pregnancy, the bullying of one nun by two others and of Mother Reverend's secret worry about a lump on her breast. He resolves all their problems one by one, showing that though he might have been setting himself as their adversary, he also had their best interests in heart.
Voiello's patriarchy is benign rather than hostile. It is another dichotomy since Voiello is revealed to be the mature pragmatist who guards the Vatican against anarchy and true evil, in contrast to the good-intentioned but weak Pope John Paul III, who lets evil sidle up and nestle at his side.
This is further revealed in the live broadcast of the Pope's first interview where he starts getting withdrawal from not having used the leeches just when the interviewer asks him about evil and how it has dug its claws into the Church. He excuses himself and walks away as the aghast Cardinals and Sofia look on.
'The New Pope' episodes air on Mondays at 9 p.m. on HBO.