Director Roland Joffe Talks About His New Film 'There Be Dragons'

Written and directed by Roland Joffé, this epic tale revisits the time of the Spanish Civil War, 75 years ago. During this brutal conflict, fought in Spain in the late 1930's, thousands of priests and nuns were persecuted and murdered.

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WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - On May 6, 2011 an amazing film, centered on the life of St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, will open in theaters across the country.

"There Be Dragons" tells the story of London-based investigative journalist Robert Torres (played by Dougray Scott) who tries to unravel a deadly mystery nearly 70 years old that links his father to the founder of a Catholic organization called Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva (played by Charlie Cox). As he begins his search, he soon discovers some shocking truths that are far more than he bargained for.

Written and directed by Roland Joffé, this epic tale revisits the time of the Spanish Civil War, 75 years ago. During this brutal conflict, fought in Spain in the late 1930's, thousands of priests and nuns were persecuted and murdered.

Joffé, who first made his mark in his native England, is best known for directing several epic movies including, "The Killing Fields," "The Mission," and "The Scarlet Letter." In "There Be Dragons" he returns to a similar theme to that of his 1986 film, "The Mission," which focused on the work of Spanish Jesuit missionaries in South America who contended against pro-slavery forces from Portugal.

The director took time recently to answer questions from reporters about his most recent film.

COL: Given that you also wrote the screenplay for the film, can you tell me how you decided to develop the story of Josemaria using another character to portray a kind of "everyman? What sources did you draw from?

Roland: Well, first of all, you must understand that "There Be Dragons" is not a biopic about Josemaria Escriva. It's looking at what the life of a saint may mean. I don't even do that by just concentrating on the life of a saint.

In particular, it was Josemaria who said, quite specifically, that God could be found equally outside the confines of the church in the events of everyday life. So part of my job was to find a story that illustrated, in all honesty, what he meant by that.

I think this is an extraordinary statement and also his idea that everybody could be a saint. Well, how serious does one take the word of everybody? If we mean everybody do we really mean everybody and did he? Well he really did.

So the story then had to, if you like, honor those words of Josemaria, look at what saying this might mean, but look in the real world and look at some real people and see how that meant. I think that makes the whole idea far more relevant to people anyway and certainly makes for a much richer story telling.

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I think for instance, this is a very important thing to understand about a saint; in particular, to understand about Josemaria. If you are not to make a betrayal of what saintliness is you have to understand that the whole point of a saint's life not to focus on it, in the way that a saint doesn't.

A saint doesn't think that his life is the most important thing in the world. A saint believes other people are more important than he is and that his life finds importance by dedicating itself to other people, so I would be a poor scribe and a poor recounter of what Josemaria might have meant if I'd betrayed him by making his life the point of the story and that he would have disapproved.

I felt that what he would have wanted me to do and maybe he communicated that's what I should do was to set his life in a context, to set the life of a saint in the context of other people who may apparently be not so saintly, but as in Josemaria's terms, were just as saintly as he was.

COL: Were you in anyway intimitated or hindered in developing the story about St. Josemaria Escriva, particularly some of the more human aspects of him, knowing that he has, only a few years ago, been canonized as a saint by a pope before a huge crowd in St. Peter's Square and that therefore the audience might expect a certain kind of behavior from him?

Roland: I think it's a very good question to say how is one honest to telling the life of a saint who is also a human being. I think one of the ways to do that is to look into a sense of what the saint or saints in general say about themselves and in general, saints are very specific about their own humanity.

So in a sense it..again I think wouldn't behoove me to say I have to like surround this person with a kind of aura because that's been done already. I think what I have to say is what is the truth of the situation? How might one express myself as a saint?

Well, one of the various new things is what period in history did this saint live? In other words, you couldn't phrase it this way. You could say what did God ask of this saint in particular and how did he ask it by setting this saint in a particular social and historical context.

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For instance, a saint living say 500 years in the future will probably have to deal with a quite different series of situations and questions that a saint who lived 500 years in the past.

So in that sense, one is intimidated because one is looking at a man who is dealing with something that is far more intimidating which was - how did he live his truth and his relationship with Christ and with God? And how did that express itself in his relationship with ordinary human beings who are after all God's children?

COL Note: Another news agency asked a couple of additional questions that I was sure would be of interest to Catholic Online readers.

Question: As an agnostic, why did you decide to make a film about a catholic saint?

Roland: Because I thought he was a very important man for one thing. A saint after all is a hero of the church. That's the hero of some billion or so people. This is a man of significance and importance. Also because I think that it ill behooves us.whatever we are as human beings not take religion seriously. I really do think that's stupid.

Religious expression is vitally important to many people. It's the warp and weft of our history. You could argue it is innately in our nature. I don't think it's the job of a writer to say, well because I find it difficult to believe I should then disrespect the belief of others.

I think the job is much more interesting to say well okay, let me come at this from the position of an outsider. Let me absolutely honor the truth of what this man is saying and the truth what he had to say was extremely important and creative and vital.

I suppose in some ways there might be certain freedom from being able to approach the life of a saint from a slightly different position because maybe one can be freer in sort of interpreting the rules, but I think that religion always has been, still is and will be for a long time, part of a crucially important warp and weft of human life.

Question: How has making this film influenced your view of the Catholic Church?

Roland: Well I've had an ongoing relationship with the Catholic Church really all my life. I mean. some of the members of my adopted family were Catholic or High Church of England, which was often the same kind of thing. I spent a childhood visiting the great cathedrals of Europe, so there is no way in which I wouldn't feel that the Catholic Church isn't kind of integrally involved in the human history.

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I think probably though, it's made me think about something to do with saintliness. It's really quite important.

One of the things that strikes me is that saintliness, in some senses is not really a life. It's as athough saintliness is a series of acts. There are saintly acts and you have to imagine a saint's life as a sort of string, like a bead necklace and on this bead necklace are a consistent continuing set of saintly acts.

It's not that a saint somehow gets some inner truth and now there are no struggles. I'm just a saint and everything works. No. No. A saint has to struggle everyday with complex and often passionately felt issues.

So there are lots of emotional moments and, I guess, we deal with in a more saintly or less saintly way than others. Generally, a saint becomes a hero of the church because there are many beads on the string.

But why is this important? I think it's very important because when we say that each individual can be a saint, we don't really mean individuals are lesser mortals. What we mean is the number of saintly moments maybe much less; maybe a person has 2 or 3 in their life and not a larger number. That is very very important because we are not saying saints are not human. We are saying saints are fundamentally and totally human because it is their very humanity that makes them.enables them to be saints.

Therefore, they say something very important to us, which is not "a saint is something you can't aspire to be." It says saintly moments doing saintly things.forgiving somebody, showing a particular kind of charity, a particular kind of warmth, a particular kind of connection to others. Those are within your remit.

It may be that you are also a teacher or an electrician or a plumber and you don't have time to put many beads on your necklace, but you can have some and therefore you and a saint are of the same breed. You are in the eyes of God somebody that He loves and cares about.

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Samuel Goldwyn Films indicated that the film's themes are already resonating with people of all faiths who must make daily choices to "conquer the dragons" they encounter by avoiding conflict in favor of embracing opportunities for forgiveness. 

Bishop Michael Sheridan, from the Diocese of Colorado Springs, stated that "There Be Dragons" is "a deeply moving depiction of the triumph of love and forgiveness."
 
Motive Entertainment, who developed resources for Mel Gibson's "Passion of Christ" and Disney's "Chronicles of Narnia" films is releasing a variety of free teaching and preaching materials. It will be staging special premieres for churches and organizations during opening weekend in theaters nationwide.

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For more information, you can visit www.ThereBeDragonsFilm.com, or the resources site, www.DragonsResources.com.

The film opens Friday, May 6, 2011

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Randy Sly is the Associate Editor of Catholic Online and the CEO/Associate Publisher for the Northern Virginia Local Edition of Catholic Online (http://virginia.catholic.org). He is a former Archbishop of the Charismatic Episcopal Church who laid aside that ministry to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

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