Desert Hearts: I watch “The Jewish Cardinal”

Last updated on: January 20, 2019 at 10:18 pm by Eve Tushnet

Desert Hearts: I watch “The Jewish Cardinal” 2019-01-20T22:18:15-04:00 Eve Tushnet

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Lord, if this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few of them.

–St Teresa of Ávila, granddaughter of a Jewish man forced to convert to Catholicism

The Jewish Cardinal is a 2013 biopic of Jean-Marie (ne Aaron) Lustiger, a Jew who converted to Catholicism at age 14, a few months after the Nazis occupied France. The storyline of the movie is basically that one fact, its implications and its inner engines and its inescapability. It’s about a man who may have wanted to be many things (a cardinal never among them) but who was called by God to be one thing: the Jewish cardinal.

For me the film, from director Ilan Duran Cohen (who co-wrote with Chantal Derudder), was haunting and painful in spite of its weaknesses. It’s a film full of talking–or rather, yelling, since most of these characters spend most of their time in angry conflict. The Cardinal (Laurent Lucas) is an irascible man, impatient in a way that would humanize him more in a movie which spent less of its time on his arguments. His cousin (Audrey Dana) and father (Henri Guybet) are fairly one-note, she patient and he disappointed. He has a priest-helpmeet (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) who provides a needed respite–I did love how this film portrays men in one another’s service, the admiration a man can have for his superior in religion. This priest’s service has the personal character of an obedient, self-effacing love.

The most complex of the cardinal’s relationships is his early infatuation with Pope John Paul II (Aurélien Recoing, with an uncanny impression of that pope’s canny smirk), which curdles when a Catholic convent is opened at Auschwitz. Cardinal Lustiger finds that the Pope is willing to sacrifice Jewish dignity and Jewish memory in order to score points against the Polish Communists. John Paul II is not a villain, here, but he’s the closest thing the film has to one. He’s increasingly obsessed with the Cold War–and, in a touch which gives pain and subtlety to the movie’s implicit portrait of God, he receives a vision of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which only strengthens his insistence that nothing else matters. And so Cardinal Lustiger comes into conflict with the pope, and has to figure out how to stand up for his people while honoring his vows of obedience.

This movie’s Lustiger starts out as a man who wants lots of things to matter. Modern things; now things. He opens a radio show; we see him get the idea for World Youth Day while smoking with young punks by a French roadside. But it turns out that what matters in Lustiger’s life will always be his Jewishness. The way he finds to live and to die as a Catholic Jew may not satisfy any of the film’s characters, but I’ll say that I found it really touching. Although this film does exclude a lot of aspects of the cardinal’s career (Wikipedia tells me that he managed to work in many areas, from private-school funding to AIDS care) and hastens past some complicating facts (we see Lustiger unwilling to say kaddish for his father, when in real life he did say it for his mother) I was glad to see that the description of his funeral is true.

I wonder if I even need to say that I found this whole story painful and moving both because I’m also a convert from (secular) Judaism, and because I’m gay. There’s obviously no comparison between my situation and a man living out his faith in the shadow of the Holocaust. But a lot of aspects of Lustiger’s life–his attempt to live his Catholicism as the fulfillment of all he knew before; his inability to find a secure place in either his old community or his new one–did hit home.

The Village Voice praised this film–and found more to love in its look and feel than I did. The Voice critic thought Lucas played the cardinal “with great urgency and tenderness,” though to me the film conveyed the former better than the latter. One unexpected grace note is the film’s lovely use of cigarettes. People smoke constantly in this film, and smoking performs a hundred different aesthetic tasks. Most noticeably, smoking gives certain scenes a note of privacy, something inexpressible curling upward and fading from view; and it lets the characters cross religious and social boundaries. Bumming a smoke lets a cardinal connect with wayward youth, a Christian convert connect with a Jewish leader. Smoking–unlike the more ambivalent act of drinking, which John Paul II uses to open Lustiger to friendship and comradeship–is always positive in this film. (Cardinal Lustiger died of bone and lung cancer, although like, he made it into his eighties, I should be so lucky.)

There’s very little exploration of Lustiger’s personal spiritual life. He insists that his conversion was accompanied by a genuine spiritual experience–he was not simply hiding inside baptism like a bomb shelter–but we get only the briefest, most tantalizing description of what that experience was like: He was in a church, and felt an inexpressible sense of peace.

It’s a tribute to the film’s subtlety that it doesn’t feel the need to tell you that Cardinal Lustiger’s career in the Catholic Church was not characterized, to the outward eye, by peace.

Torah scroll image via Wikimedia Commons.

Gay Catholic Whatnot

Mackerel-Snapping

a shandeh for the goyim

Gay Catholic Whatnot

His banner over me was love

John Paul II

moral memories of the past

put not your trust in princes of the Church

the dark continent: Europe in the twentieth century

the pope makes me feel minty

Previous Post

January 20, 2019

Alms for Oblivion: I review a new biography of Edward Gorey

Next Post

January 25, 2019 Bringing Your Pilgrimage Home: I write about World Youth Day & Adoptive Brotherhood

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Art Best-Of Gay Catholic Whatnot Mackerel-Snapping self-obsessed Too much is never enough Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003 December 2002 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002 June 2002 May 2002 April 2002 March 2002 February 2002 January 2002

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

The queen of Ethiopia in the time of the early church was …

Select your answer to see how you score.

Candace Hatshepsut Bernice Esther