There Be Dragons

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the archaic cartography expression, see Here be dragons.
There Be Dragons
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRoland Joffé
Written byRoland Joffé
Produced byRoland Joffé
Ignacio G. Sancha
Ignacio Núñez
Guy J. Louthan
StarringCharlie Cox
Wes Bentley
Dougray Scott
Unax Ugalde
Olga Kurylenko
Golshifteh Farahani
Geraldine Chaplin
Rodrigo Santoro
CinematographyGabriel Beristain
Edited byRichard Nord
Ken Blackwell
(recut)
Music byStephen Warbeck
Robert Folk
(recut)
Distributed bySamuel Goldwyn Films
Release dates
  • 23 March 2011 (2011-03-23) (Cine Capitol premiere)
  • 25 March 2011 (2011-03-25) (Spain)
  • 6 May 2011 (2011-05-06) (US)
Running time
122 minutes
CountriesUnited States
Spain
Argentina
LanguageEnglish
Budget$36 million[1]
Box office$4.4 million[2]

There Be Dragons is a 2011

Roman Catholic saint.[3]

Plot

Arising out of the horror of the Spanish Civil War, a candidate for canonization is investigated by a journalist who discovers his own estranged father had a deep, dark and devastating connection to the saint's life.

Cast

Olga Kurylenko plays Ildikó Petőfi, a young Hungarian woman fighting with the International Brigades.

Production

The film was produced by Roland Joffé (also the director), Guy J. Louthan, and Opus Dei members Ignacio G. Sancha and Ignacio Núñez.

Sancha and Núñez created a fund that has resources from private equity funds and other institutional and private investors.

Antena 3, owner of the first private television network in Spain, also funded the film. The production services were provided by Morena Films of Spain and Historias Cinematográficas of Argentina
.

Catholicism. Escrivá told her that she should not convert, because it would be disrespectful to her parents. 'I thought this was so open-minded,' Mr. Joffé said."[4] At that point, Joffé signed on to direct, with the condition of writing a new screenplay from scratch and becoming a producer. "In writing his own script, Mr. Joffé came up with a convoluted plot in which a young journalist discovers that his estranged father has a long-buried connection to Escrivá," reported the Times.[4] Joffé traveled to Spain, Italy and South America to do additional research in order to write his script.[4] After an official credits arbitration conducted by the Writers Guild of America
(WGA), the Guild has decided that the writing credits of the film will be "Written by Roland Joffé", which is the highest writing credit possible. With this decision, the WGA has confirmed that Joffé's screenplay is completely original and that the script written by Barbara Nicolosi bears no relationship whatsoever with the film There Be Dragons.

In the press conference held in Buenos Aires on 24 August 2009, Sancha stated that "our role is to create a space of free creativity for Roland, who has absolute free hand as a filmmaker. The value of the project lies in the fact that someone completely independent from the subject or the Catholic Church, and who is an agnostic, is portraying Josemaría according to his own view."

Director Roland Joffé wanted to share Josemaria's story on film because he admired the way the saint's faith influenced his day-to-day life. "Josemaria’s idea was that you find sanctity; you find your religious experience not only in liturgical things or in the church, but in the very act of living in your daily life," Joffé reported to CBN.com.[6]

There Be Dragons features Argentine production director Eugenio Zanetti, who won the Oscar in 1996 for Restoration. The costume designer is Yvonne Blake, who won an Oscar for Nicholas and Alexandra and designed the costumes for Superman. Two-time Oscar winner Michèle Burke is in charge of the special make-up effects. Stephen Warbeck, who won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, composed the original score.

Fr. John Wauck served as an on-set adviser, playing the same role that Daniel Berrigan played for Jeremy Irons in The Mission. Luis Gordon, a former spokesman of the prelature of Opus Dei, stated that "The film team asked us for help in gathering information and we gave them access to the documentation."[7]

To portray Madrid in the 1930s, a part of the film was filmed in Luján, Argentina.[8]

The film was heavily re-edited by Ken Blackwell and re-released in the United States in January 2012 with the sub-title "Secretos de Pasión". The new cut of the film was re-scored by Robert Folk, and a soundtrack was released on Varèse Sarabande Records.[9]

Story and themes

Director Roland Joffé said There Be Dragons is "a story about people trying to find meaning about their lives."[10] The epic film tells the story of a Spanish journalist, Robert, who is mending relations with his dying father, Manolo, who took part in the Spanish Civil War. The journalist discovers through his investigations that his father was a close childhood friend of Josemaría Escrivá, a candidate for sainthood, with whom he had a complicated relationship.[4][5] Manolo became a soldier during the Spanish Civil War and became obsessed with a beautiful Hungarian revolutionary, Ildiko. She rejects him and gives herself to a brave militia leader Oriol. Manolo becomes jealous and takes a path of betrayal.[11]

The film includes the early life of

John Paul II in 2002. Joffé, who initially shied away from the project, was "ultimately intrigued by the chance to dramatize the life of a modern-day saint, particularly considering Escrivá's 'liberating' view that a path to God could be found in an ordinary life."[5]

There Be Dragons is a drama which explores themes such as betrayal, forgiveness, friendship, and finding the meaning of life in everyday life. According to Joffé, they are "making a film about love, human love and divine love, about hate, about betrayal, about war, about mistakes, about everything it is to be a human being."[5] The theme of forgiveness, says Charlie Cox, who plays St. Josemaria, is "always going to be a key when you're talking about Christianity at all, especially if you’re talking about a man who is canonized." Josemaria, Cox adds, "understood that the reason one must forgive is because that hatred and that anger and that resentment lives in you."[12]

"Reconciliation matters" is the main take-away message that Joffe expects for the viewers. Life, he said, is an opportunity to love: "It's a choice, and in making that decision you become free. You do not become free when you hate. The weird thing is when you really love, you feel it like a breath of freedom, you think ‘Oh my God, I’ve chosen this, and it’s beautiful’.”[13] He emphasized that Christianity is about love and the teaching of St. Josemaria "encourages a spiritual relationship with God in 'very simple things', in cooking a meal, being with one’s family, or even having a fight."[13] Joffé states that this is "a film about what it means to be a saint in this day and age."[14]

The title refers to the theme of exploring the unknown territories of hatred, guilt, and forgiveness, said the producer Ignacio G. Sancha.[5] "There be dragons" is a shorter version of the phrase "here there be dragons" from the Latin hic sunt dracones, an ancient way of denoting in maps a place where there is danger, or an unknown place, a place to be explored.

Release

The film was pre-screened at the Madrid's Cine Capitol [es] on 23 March 2011.[15] It was theatrically released in Spain on 25 March,[16] and in the United States on 6 May.

Reception

The film was poorly received commercially and critically. Based on 19 published reviews,

better source needed] Critics generally praised the film's production values but panned Joffé's screenplay and direction. Stephen Holden, of The New York Times, described the film as an "interminable two-hour Sunday school sermon punctuated with battlefield carnage".[21] There were a few positive reviews, including Peter Bruges from Variety who stated: "Demonstrat[es] an increasingly rare sense of scope and pageantry"[22]

According to

Joaquin Navarro-Valls, one of the investors, the film "has started a movement of many people who feel moved to forgive. The producers are daily receiving messages of thanks (some are on the Internet) from people who see the film and decide to return home after years of separation, from spouses who are reconciled, from parents and children who have come to accept one another again, from others who return to God after a long time of being distanced from him."[23]

See also

References

  1. ^ "There Be Dragons, an interview with Ignacio Nunez". Fest21. Vanessa McMahon. May 17, 2011. Archived from the original on 2011-07-18. Retrieved 2011-07-12.
  2. ^ "There Be Dragons Total Lifetime Grosses". Box Office Mojo. May 30, 2011. Retrieved 2012-09-05.
  3. ^ "Director Roland Joffé Explains "There Be Dragons"
  4. ^ a b c d e Laurie Goodstein (August 21, 2009). "Bringing a Saint's Life to Screen". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-09-05.
  5. ^ a b c d e Nicole Neroulias (August 31, 2009). "After 'Da Vinci,' Opus Dei cautiously optimistic about new film". Nola.com. Archived from the original on September 5, 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
  6. ^ Director Roland Joffé Explains "There Be Dragons"", CBN.com.
  7. ^ Austen Ivereigh (2009-06-08). "Opus Dei founder gets 'The Mission' treatment". America Magazine. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
  8. ^ "Roland Joffé filming Opus Dei pic". Hollywood Reporter. Associated Press. August 24, 2009. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
  9. ^ There Be Dragons: Secretos De Pasión, Varese Sarabande Records, (archived version from december 21st, 2013)
  10. ^ Catholic Herald Staff Reporter (4 September 2009). "British actors line up for film about life of Opus Dei founder". Catholic Herald. Archived from the original on 6 September 2009. Retrieved 2009-09-06.
  11. ^ Reuters live phone conference Archived 2009-11-16 at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Phil Fox Rose (May 3, 2011). "Interview: Charlie Cox – The man who plays St. Josemaria Escrivá in the upcoming There Be Dragons talks about forgiveness, Opus Dei and how playing a saint has affected him". Busted Halo. Retrieved 2011-05-07.
  13. ^ a b Catholic News Agency (31 October 2009). "Upcoming movie about St. Josemaria Escriva focuses on love, forgiveness and redemption, says director". Catholic News Agency. Retrieved 2010-11-18.
  14. ^ DPA (2009-08-26). "Director of The Mission shooting film on Opus Dei founder – Feature". Earthtimes. Archived from the original on 2012-09-05. Retrieved 2009-09-04.
  15. ^ "Ciclo de cine de verano". El Civismo. 27 January 2016.
  16. ^ "Encontrarás dragones". Sensacine (in Spanish). Retrieved 3 November 2021.
  17. ^ There Be Dragons, at Metacritic.com
  18. ^ There be Dragons, at RottenTomatoes.com
  19. ^ Box office / business for There Be Dragons (2011), IMDb.com
  20. ^ "Blogger". 28 June 2011.
  21. ^ Stephen Holden, "A Guess-the-Flavoring Game, and Then Along Comes a War", The New York Times, May 5, 2011.
  22. ^ Peter Bruges, There Be Dragons, Variety Mar. 24, 2011
  23. ^ Jesus Colina, Movie Inspires Forgiveness Movement, Zenit News Agency, 2011-05-04

External links

Commentary during production

Reviews

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