Holy Silence

2020

Action / Documentary

1
IMDb Rating 7.1/10 10 86 86

vatican vatican (holy see) pope holocaust (shoah) world war ii anti-semitism

Plot summary

As World War II looms, Pope Pius XI calls on a humble American priest to help him challenge the evils of Nazism and anti-Semitism. But death intervenes, and Pope Pius XII now carries out a very different response to Hitler and the Holocaust.

Director

Steven Pressman Photo
Steven Pressman

Top cast

David Strathairn Photo
David Strathairn as President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Marco Barricelli Photo
Marco Barricelli as Pope Pius XII
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
494.1 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
25 fps
12 hr 53 min
Seeds ...
917.19 MB
1920*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
25 fps
12 hr 53 min
Seeds 1

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by CinemaSerf 6 / 10

Holy Silence

Some impressive archive research has gone into this otherwise rather shallow analysis of the Popes Pius XI & Pius XII as they tried to reconcile their faith and their church with the increasing fascist nationalism that was gripping Europe in the 1930s. With contributions from various American academics it tries to speculate as to the extent to which the former pontiff was prepared to take a much more proactive stance condemning anti-semitosm before his death led to the elevation of his politically savvy Secretary of State to a papacy that he felt had to tread a very fine line between acquiescence and condemnation. Sadly, though it does use the actuality to illustrate their predicament quite well, the underlying journalism doesn't really ask anything especially penetrating, nor does it consult sources who actually lived and worked in Europe at the time, even had they been talking in a "World at War" style retrospective. I don't think there's an Italian or a German interviewed throughout the documentary and that lack of more local objectivity from a European perspective does rather limit it's scope. Ultimately, I found it added little to the detail of this fascinating and internecine period of history but delivered a lot of overly simplistic commentary.
Reviewed by prrb-73214 5 / 10

Fine, but not Complete

This film gives a great overview of the actions and attitude of Pope Pius XI, and a unique look at American involvement in the Holy See's response to the Holocaust and Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Fortunately, this film doesn't fall into the "Hitler's Pope" trope, all too common when this topic is discussed.However, I felt that this film provided a fairly historiographically one-sided and untenable view of Pope Pius XII as a man almost indifferent towards the fate of the Jews. While I believe a contention can be made about the effect an official Papal pronouncement may have had on the Nazis rise to power, this film gives little to no attention to actions undertaken directly by Pope Pius XII and at his discretion during the war, such as the organization of visas and fake baptismal certificates for Jews, his role in the publication of the Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge", diplomatic pressures placed on governments by Pope Pius XII and the Holy See (notably, his personal comments to Josef Tiso, the leader of Slovakia and a Catholic priest, to whose representative was expressed "the deep sorrow experienced by His Holiness because of the sufferings inflicted on so many people because of their nationality or race" and a reminder that his actions were incompatible with his priesthood), and the sheltering of thousands of Jews in Vatican properties across Rome. An interesting point that the film also neglects is Hitler's detestation of Pius XII (and plans to kidnap and kill him) and the praise heaped upon Pius XII by Jewish groups immediately after the war for his actions during the war, both of which add a slightly different color to the portrait of the Pontiff painted by the film, which seems to me a little too eager to align him with the forces of evil, juxtaposing his portrait over reports of German atrocities.It also neglects his role as shepherd to millions of Catholics worldwide, who perhaps he could have worked to inspire to action, but who faced persecution themselves (especially in the case of Polish Catholics) and retaliation against themselves and Jews when their leaders spoke out. Notably, France's Bishops protested the deportations of Jews, and in response, the Nazis simply increased them. It seems to a number of scholars that Pius XII's apparent silence is contemporarily misunderstood, and that his attempts to protect the sovereignty of a Church literally encirled by the powers of evil (the Nazis literally painted a circle around the Vatican, and had guns pointed at it) were used to ensure that the Church had the freedom to assist and rescue people covertly, and that a look at these actions, diplomatic attitudes and more privately expressed opinions truly show Pope Pius XII's response to the horrors of that time. The film would have done well to show these nuances and better fill out its image of Pius XII and the situation in order to give the most accurate picture possible of the scholarship now present. Hopefully with the opening of the archives, we'll soon have a much fuller image of the response of the Holy See to these times. Even still, by acknowledging some nuance and the historiographical debate within this topic, this film stands above those that just generate sensationalism based on the "Hitler's Pope" trope.
Read more IMDb reviews

4 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment