The film was released in the United States on 2 June 2023 by Gravitas Ventures and in Italy on 18 July 2024 by RS Productions.
Plot
It is the year 1920. Italian WWI veterans have returned to their impoverished villages. Padre Pio arrives at San Giovanni Rotondo after living with his family in Pietrelcina for a number of years. While still sick, he continues to encounter Satan. Satan reveals himself as the instigator of the war and the sociopolitical problems of San Giovanni. While having little contact with the people of this town, Padre Pio learns what the poor are suffering from in the Sacrament of Confession and the Holy Mass, such as when a crippled man walks again because of Padre Pio's prayer. Besides the effects of war, such as medical inadequacy, health conditions and laborers dying from the effects of mustard gas, the people suffer from corrupt, wealthy landowners. Gerardo, a militaristic anti-socialist, threatens to kill any communal laborers tending his land. Many of them join the socialist party as a way to improve their lives. However, after they win the first free election in San Giovanni, Gerardo's forces massacre many of them. Padre Pio asks God that he may become a suffering servant for their salvation. He receives the wounds of Jesus Christ. The stigmata disrupts Satan's influence on San Giovanni Rotondo.
According to Abel Ferrara, actor Willem Dafoe suggested that Shia LaBeouf should be cast for the film's leading role. After Ferrara held several Zoom calls with LaBeouf, the latter agreed to join the film,[10] even though very little money was raised (the film was almost never made) and LaBeouf did the project for free.[11]
LaBeouf arrived at Old Mission Santa Inés in July 2021 to learn about Padre Pio with the Capuchin Franciscan friars. Thanks to Father Bobby Barbato and Brother Jude Quinto, Br. Alexander Rodriguez met LaBeouf while he attended Mass everyday. He learned about the Catholic Church and the Capuchins while living in his truck or spending a few nights in the Capuchin's guest room. He was immersing himself in the Catholic faith. He enrolled in RCIA, revised the script with Rodriguez and trained to do the Latin Mass. Rodriguez traveled with LaBeouf as his spiritual adviser and catechist and was in the film as Padre Pio's companion.[12]
Filming occurred in Apulia, Italy, in December 2021.[13] The first place was at the Capuchin friary in San Marco la Catola. Padre Pio exchanged letters with his provincial and spiritual director while living in Pietrelcina with his family. The time was around 1909–1916. Both directors were living in San Marco during these years. Padre Pio expressed in his letters his deep and mysterious relationship with God and health difficulties. This event is in the film. While filming, LaBeouf slept in Padre Pio's bedroom.[10]
The film was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland 26 January 2024 by Dazzler Media.[20] RS Productions released it in Italy on 18 July 2024.[21]
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 30% based on 43 reviews, with an average rating of 4.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Tonally unbalanced and burdened with a distracting Shia LaBeouf performance, Padre Pio is one of Abel Ferrara's less divine works."[22]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 45 out of 100, based on 6 critic reviews, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[23]
Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a negative review, describing it as "clunky" and criticizing its political themes for possessing "the subtlety of a cartoon for preschoolers."[24] Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com gave the film one and a half stars out of four, describing it as a "dull slog".[25] Journalist Glenn Kenny of The New York Times found the film "occasionally rank" and panned LaBeouf's performance, though complimented Ferrara's "sometimes Brechtian consideration of the nodes of political history and spirituality."[26] Film critic Armond White of National Review also criticized the film, describing it as "a work of deluded, semi-improvisational navel-gazing".[27]
Film critic Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film a positive review, with three out of five stars, writing that it is "a weird film...with an undeveloped, improvised feel, like a fragment or shard of something else. Yet there is a background hum there...an awareness of something dark and malign. It is a minor film but interesting."[28] Writing for The New Yorker, Richard Brody considered that "in its hectic, scattershot way, Padre Pio feels very much of the desperate present day," describing it as "a historical drama without historical distance" and "a wild effort to reach the immediate experience of the past and its furies."[29]
^ abPetiprin, Andrew (2 June 2023). "Watching Shia LaBeouf as Padre Pio". Catholic Answers. Although the film does not glorify the communists, there is certainly a tacit approval of their cause in the film's depiction of their unjust working conditions.
^ abDe Sousa, Matthew (20 September 2022). "Padre Pio Review: Movie on mystic misses the mark". The Catholic Weekly. One clear example is when the devil appears to Pio as a naked woman in an extremely graphic and distasteful scene that sees her try to seduce Pio while performing a lewd act.
^ abMulderig, John (1 June 2023). "Movie Review: 'Padre Pio'". The Catholic Review. The screenplay suggests points of coherence between Marxism and Christianity. But if that sounds like an uneasy mix, the attempted blending of the events unfolding inside the walls of the Franciscan refuge and those transpiring beyond it is equally unstable.
