There Be Dragons
Encyclopedia
There Be Dragons is a historical epic written and directed by Roland Joffé
, a British filmmaker well known for directing The Mission, The Killing Fields
and Captivity
. It is a drama set during the Spanish Civil War
which features themes such as betrayal, love and hatred, forgiveness, friendship, and finding meaning in everyday life. The film was released on 6 May 2011. It includes the story of soldiers, a journalist, his father, and a real life priest, Josemaría Escrivá, later canonized as a recent Roman Catholic saint
, the founder of Opus Dei
.
The film stars Charlie Cox
(Stardust and Casanova
), Wes Bentley
(American Beauty
and Ghost Rider
), Rodrigo Santoro
(300
and I Love You Phillip Morris
), Derek Jacobi
(I, Claudius
and Little Dorrit
), Geraldine Chaplin
(Talk to her
and The Wolfman), Jordi Mollà
(Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Knight and Day), Golshifteh Farahani
(Body of Lies
and Darbareye Elly
), Dougray Scott
(Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Desperate Housewives
), Olga Kurylenko
(Quantum of Solace and Max Payne
), Unax Ugalde
(Che Part 1: The Argentine
and Bon Appétit
) and Lily Cole
(Rage
and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
).
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. 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.
The film includes the early life of Josemaría Escrivá, a modern-day saint and the founder of Opus Dei
, an institution of the Catholic Church which teaches that ordinary human life is a path to sanctity. Escrivá, who died in 1975, was canonized by 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."
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." 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."
Joffé, a self described "wobbly agnostic
" who was nominated for the Academy Award for his film The Mission
which deals with a Jesuit mission in South America, said that he is "very interested in the idea of embarking on a piece of work that took religion seriously on its own terms and didn't play a game where one approached religion denying its validity."
"Reconciliation matters" is the main take away message that Joffe expects from 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’.” 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." Joffé states that this is "a film about what it means to be a saint in this day and age."
The title refers to its theme exploring the unknown territories of hatred, guilt, and forgiveness, said the producer Ignacio G. Sancha. "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.
Ignacio G. Sancha and Ignacio Núñez created a fund that has resources from private equity funds and other institutional and private investors. The television network and media company, Antena 3
, the first private station in Spain, is also funding the film. The production services have been provided by Morena Films of Spain and Historias Cinematográficas of Argentina.
The New York Times, which called the film a religious epic, reported that a different script written by Barbara Nicolosi
was first offered to Hugh Hudson
and Alejandro González Iñárritu
who both turned it down. Joffé also initially turned down the offer to work as the film's director. "But he said he reconsidered after he saw a video of Escrivá answering a question from a Jewish girl who wanted to convert to 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." 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 New York Times. Joffé traveled to Spain, Italy and South America to do additional research in order to write his script. 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.
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 Michele Burke
is in charge of the special make-up effects. Stephen Warbeck, who won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love
, has composed the original score. Richard Nord, who was nominated for The Fugitive
is the film editor.
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."
To portray Madrid in the 1930s, a part of the film was filmed in Luján, Argentina
.
in character". In that 1999 film he portrayed a troubled teenager, Rick Fitts.
The film was not well received either at the box office or by critics. Based on 19 published review, Metacritic
gives the film a score of 33 out of 100. Out of 35 reviews archived by Rotten Tomatoes
, only 4 were positive, giving the film a score of 11%, while among the reviews sent by the audience, 77% liked it. With an estimated budget of $36,000,000, during its opening weekend the film collected $705,537 at the US box office, compared to $1,251,124 in Spain. 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." Some of the positive reviews stated: "There Be Dragons has class written all over it" (Washington Post), "“Luminous and thought-provoking" (New York Post), "“Demonstrat[es] an increasingly rare sense of scope and pageantry" (Variety).
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."
Roland Joffé
Roland Joffé is an English-French film director who is known for his Oscar nominated movies, The Killing Fields and The Mission. He began his career in television. His early television credits included episodes of Coronation Street and an adaptation of The Stars Look Down for Granada...
, a British filmmaker well known for directing The Mission, The Killing Fields
The Killing Fields (film)
The Killing Fields is a 1984 British drama film about the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which is based on the experiences of two journalists: Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg. The film, which won three Academy Awards, was directed by Roland Joffé and stars Sam Waterston as...
and Captivity
Captivity (film)
Captivity is a 2007 thriller film directed by Roland Joffé, based on a screenplay by Larry Cohen and Joseph Tura, and starring Elisha Cuthbert...
. It is a drama set during the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
which features themes such as betrayal, love and hatred, forgiveness, friendship, and finding meaning in everyday life. The film was released on 6 May 2011. It includes the story of soldiers, a journalist, his father, and a real life priest, Josemaría Escrivá, later canonized as a recent Roman Catholic saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
, the founder of Opus Dei
Opus Dei
Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei , is an organization of the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the...
.
The film stars Charlie Cox
Charlie Cox
Charlie Cox is an English actor.-Life and career:Cox, the youngest of five children, was born in London, England and raised in East Sussex, the son of Trisha and Andrew, who is a publisher...
(Stardust and Casanova
Casanova (film)
Casanova is a 2005 American romantic film directed by Lasse Hallström starring Heath Ledger and loosely based on the life of Giacomo Casanova.-Plot:...
), Wes Bentley
Wes Bentley
Wesley Cook "Wes" Bentley is an American film actor known for his role of Ricky Fitts in American Beauty.-Early life:Bentley was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of Cherie and David Bentley, who are United Methodist ministers....
(American Beauty
American Beauty (film)
American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela...
and Ghost Rider
Ghost Rider (film)
Ghost Rider is a 2007 superhero film written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson. Based on the character of the same name which appeared in Marvel Comics, the film stars Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist who sells his soul to the Devil and transforms into thevigilante Ghost...
), Rodrigo Santoro
Rodrigo Santoro
Rodrigo Junqueira dos Reis Santoro is a Brazilian actor.-Life and career:Santoro was born in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. He is of half Brazilian and half Italian descent. In 1993, as Santoro was studying Journalism at PUC-Rio, he entered the Actor's Workshop of Rede Globo...
(300
300 (film)
300 is a 2007 American fantasy action film based on the 1998 comic series of the same name by Frank Miller. It is a fictionalized retelling of the Battle of Thermopylae. The film was directed by Zack Snyder, while Miller served as executive producer and consultant...
and I Love You Phillip Morris
I Love You Phillip Morris
I Love You Phillip Morris is a 2009 American romantic comedy-drama film based on the 1980s and '90s real-life story of con artist, impostor, and multiple prison escapee Steven Jay Russell, as played by Jim Carrey. While incarcerated, Russell falls in love with his fellow inmate, Phillip Morris...
), Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi
Sir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...
(I, Claudius
I, Claudius
I, Claudius is a novel by English writer Robert Graves, written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius. As such, it includes history of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC to Caligula's assassination in AD 41...
and Little Dorrit
Little Dorrit (film)
Little Dorrit is a 1988 film adaptation of the novel Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. It was written and directed by Christine Edzard, and produced by John Brabourne and Richard B. Goodwin. The music, by Giuseppe Verdi, was arranged by Michael Sanvoisin.The film stars Derek Jacobi as Arthur...
), Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Chaplin
Geraldine Leigh Chaplin is an English-American actress and the daughter of Charlie Chaplin.Chaplin first came to prominence for her Golden Globe-nominated role of Tonya in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago . She received her second Golden Globe nomination for Robert Altman's Nashville...
(Talk to her
Talk to Her
Talk to Her is a 2002 Spanish comedy-drama film written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar, starring Javier Cámara, Darío Grandinetti, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin, and Rosario Flores...
and The Wolfman), Jordi Mollà
Jordi Mollà
Jordi Mollá Perales is a Spanish actor, filmmaker, writer and artist.Mollà's artwork is represented in the Carmen De la Guerra Gallery in Madrid, Picasso Mio Gallery in Madrid and Barcelona and Cold Creation Gallery in Barcelona...
(Elizabeth: The Golden Age and Knight and Day), Golshifteh Farahani
Golshifteh Farahani
Golshifteh Farahani is a Crystal-Simorgh winning Iranian actress and pianist.- Early life :Golshifteh Farahani was born on 10 July 1983 in Tehran, the daughter of actor/theater director Behzad Farahani and his spouse, Fahime Rahiminia and sister of actress Shaghayegh Farahani. She started studying...
(Body of Lies
Body of Lies (film)
Body of Lies is a 2008 American spy film directed by Ridley Scott. Set in the Middle East, it follows the attempts of the CIA and Jordanian Intelligence to catch "al-Saleem", a fictional jihadist terrorist...
and Darbareye Elly
About Elly
About Elly is a 2009 Iranian film directed by Asghar Farhadi. It is the fourth film by Farhadi. The film is about the relationship among some middle class families in Iran....
), Dougray Scott
Dougray Scott
-Early life:The son of Elma, a nurse, and Alan Scott, an actor and salesperson, Stephen Dougray Scott was born in Glenrothes, Fife and attended Auchmuty High School...
(Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...
), Olga Kurylenko
Olga Kurylenko
Olha Kostyantynivna Kurylenko , better known as Olga Kurylenko, is a French actress and model. She is perhaps best known as the Bond girl, Camille Montes, in the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. She also portrayed Nika Boronina in the movie adaptation of the video game Hitman...
(Quantum of Solace and Max Payne
Max Payne
Max Payne is a BAFTA Award–winning third-person shooter video game developed by Finnish developers Remedy Entertainment and published by Gathering of Developers in July 2001 for Microsoft Windows. Ports created later in the year for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and the GameBoy Advance were published by...
), Unax Ugalde
Unax Ugalde
Unax Ugalde Gutiérrez is a Spanish actor born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Álava, in the Basque Country.-Biography:Unax Ugalde, son of a worker at the Altos Hornos and a housewife, was born in 1978 in Vitoria-Gasteiz. While, as a student, he ambitioned to become a marine scientist, started taking classes...
(Che Part 1: The Argentine
Che (film)
Che is a two-part 2008 biopic about Ernesto 'Che' Guevara directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro. Rather than follow a standard chronological order, the films offer an oblique series of interspersed moments along the overall timeline...
and Bon Appétit
Bon Appétit (film)
Bon Appétit is a 2010 romantic drama film directed by David Pinillos and written by Juan Carlos Rubio, David Pinillos and Paco Cabezas. The story is based on a young spanish chef working at a prestigious restaurant in Zurich, Switzerland. He falls in love with a work-partner but she is in love with...
) and Lily Cole
Lily Cole
Lily Luahana Cole is an English model and actress. Cole's modelling career was launched by a chance encounter with Benjamin Hart in Soho, London when she was 14....
(Rage
Rage (2009 film)
Rage is a 2009 film written and directed by Sally Potter starring Jude Law and Judi Dench. The filmmakers said that the film created a new genre in filmmaking, called naked cinema.-Press releases:...
and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is a 2009 fantasy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam and Charles McKeown. The film follows a traveling theater troupe whose leader, having made a bet with the Devil, takes audience members through a magical mirror to explore their imaginations...
).
Story and themes
Director Roland Joffé said There Be Dragons is "a story about people trying to find meaning about their lives." The epic filmEpic film
An epic is a genre of film that emphasizes human drama on a grand scale. Epics are more ambitious in scope than other film genres, and their ambitious nature helps to differentiate them from similar genres such as the period piece or adventure 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
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. 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. 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.
The film includes the early life of Josemaría Escrivá, a modern-day saint and the founder of Opus Dei
Opus Dei
Opus Dei, formally known as The Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei , is an organization of the Catholic Church that teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. The majority of its membership are lay people, with secular priests under the...
, an institution of the Catholic Church which teaches that ordinary human life is a path to sanctity. Escrivá, who died in 1975, was canonized by 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."
There Be Dragons is a drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
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." 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."
Joffé, a self described "wobbly agnostic
Weak agnosticism
Weak agnosticism is the assertion that, at present, there is not enough information to know whether any deities exist, but that such might become knowable. It is in contrast to strong agnosticism, which is the belief that the existence of any gods is completely unknowable to humanity...
" who was nominated for the Academy Award for his film The Mission
The Mission
- Film and theater :* The Mission , 1986 film by Roland Joffé* The Mission , a.k.a. Cheung fo, by Johnnie To* The Mission , 1980 German play by former East German playwright Heiner Müller, also known as The Task- Music :* The Mission , the original score album of the 1986 film by Ennio Morricone*...
which deals with a Jesuit mission in South America, said that he is "very interested in the idea of embarking on a piece of work that took religion seriously on its own terms and didn't play a game where one approached religion denying its validity."
"Reconciliation matters" is the main take away message that Joffe expects from 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’.” 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." Joffé states that this is "a film about what it means to be a saint in this day and age."
The title refers to its theme exploring the unknown territories of hatred, guilt, and forgiveness, said the producer Ignacio G. Sancha. "There be dragons" is a shorter version of the phrase "here there be dragons
Here be dragons
"Here be dragons" is a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the medieval practice of putting sea serpents and other mythological creatures in uncharted areas of maps.-History:...
" 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.
Cast
- Charlie CoxCharlie CoxCharlie Cox is an English actor.-Life and career:Cox, the youngest of five children, was born in London, England and raised in East Sussex, the son of Trisha and Andrew, who is a publisher...
as Josemaría Escrivá - Wes BentleyWes BentleyWesley Cook "Wes" Bentley is an American film actor known for his role of Ricky Fitts in American Beauty.-Early life:Bentley was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of Cherie and David Bentley, who are United Methodist ministers....
as Manolo - Dougray ScottDougray Scott-Early life:The son of Elma, a nurse, and Alan Scott, an actor and salesperson, Stephen Dougray Scott was born in Glenrothes, Fife and attended Auchmuty High School...
as Robert - Golshifteh FarahaniGolshifteh FarahaniGolshifteh Farahani is a Crystal-Simorgh winning Iranian actress and pianist.- Early life :Golshifteh Farahani was born on 10 July 1983 in Tehran, the daughter of actor/theater director Behzad Farahani and his spouse, Fahime Rahiminia and sister of actress Shaghayegh Farahani. She started studying...
as Leila - Olga KurylenkoOlga KurylenkoOlha Kostyantynivna Kurylenko , better known as Olga Kurylenko, is a French actress and model. She is perhaps best known as the Bond girl, Camille Montes, in the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. She also portrayed Nika Boronina in the movie adaptation of the video game Hitman...
as the Hungarian woman - Rodrigo SantoroRodrigo SantoroRodrigo Junqueira dos Reis Santoro is a Brazilian actor.-Life and career:Santoro was born in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro. He is of half Brazilian and half Italian descent. In 1993, as Santoro was studying Journalism at PUC-Rio, he entered the Actor's Workshop of Rede Globo...
as Oriol, - Derek JacobiDerek JacobiSir Derek George Jacobi, CBE is an English actor and film director.A "forceful, commanding stage presence", Jacobi has enjoyed a highly successful stage career, appearing in such stage productions as Hamlet, Uncle Vanya, and Oedipus the King. He received a Tony Award for his performance in...
as Honorio - Lily ColeLily ColeLily Luahana Cole is an English model and actress. Cole's modelling career was launched by a chance encounter with Benjamin Hart in Soho, London when she was 14....
as Aline - Unax UgaldeUnax UgaldeUnax Ugalde Gutiérrez is a Spanish actor born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Álava, in the Basque Country.-Biography:Unax Ugalde, son of a worker at the Altos Hornos and a housewife, was born in 1978 in Vitoria-Gasteiz. While, as a student, he ambitioned to become a marine scientist, started taking classes...
as Pedro
Production
The film is produced by Roland Joffé, who is the director. Guy J. Louthan and members of Opus Dei Ignacio G. Sancha and Ignacio Núñez are also producers.Ignacio G. Sancha and Ignacio Núñez created a fund that has resources from private equity funds and other institutional and private investors. The television network and media company, Antena 3
Antena 3 (Spain)
Antena 3 is a Spanish terrestrial television channel owned by Antena 3 de Televisión. Some of the more popular programmes broadcast by Antena 3 include Aquí no hay quien viva, El Barco, Los Protegidos, Los Simpson and El Internado....
, the first private station in Spain, is also funding the film. The production services have been provided by Morena Films of Spain and Historias Cinematográficas of Argentina.
The New York Times, which called the film a religious epic, reported that a different script written by Barbara Nicolosi
Barbara Nicolosi
Barbara Nicolosi-Harrington is an American screenwriter, script consultant and founder of a Christian screenwriter’s program.-Early life and Education:...
was first offered to Hugh Hudson
Hugh Hudson
Hugh Hudson is an English film director. His best-known international success is the 1981 multiple Academy Award-winning film, Chariots of Fire.- Early life :...
and Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu
Alejandro González Iñárritu is a Mexican film director.González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the DGA of America for Best Director. He is also the first and only Mexican born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene...
who both turned it down. Joffé also initially turned down the offer to work as the film's director. "But he said he reconsidered after he saw a video of Escrivá answering a question from a Jewish girl who wanted to convert to 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." 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 New York Times. Joffé traveled to Spain, Italy and South America to do additional research in order to write his script. 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.
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
Nicholas and Alexandra
Nicholas and Alexandra is a 1971 biographical film which tells the story of the last Russian monarch, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra....
and designed the costumes for Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
. Two-time Oscar winner Michele Burke
Michèle Burke
Michèle Burke is an Irish-born make-up artist. She emigrated to Canada with her brother Mark in 1973 and first worked as a model in Montreal before becoming a make-up artist. She currently holds both Canadian and U.S. citizenship, in addition to her original Irish nationality...
is in charge of the special make-up effects. Stephen Warbeck, who won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard....
, has composed the original score. Richard Nord, who was nominated for The Fugitive
The Fugitive (1993 film)
The Fugitive is a 1993 American thriller film based on the television series of the same name. The film was directed by Andrew Davis and stars Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. The film was one of the few movies associated with a television series to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best...
is the film editor.
Fr. John Wauck served as an on-set adviser, playing the same role that Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan
Daniel Berrigan, SJ is an American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet. Daniel and his brother Philip were for a time on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam war....
played for Jeremy Irons
Jeremy Irons
Jeremy John Irons is an English actor. After receiving classical training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Irons began his acting career on stage in 1969, and has since appeared in many London theatre productions including The Winter's Tale, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the...
in The Mission
The Mission
- Film and theater :* The Mission , 1986 film by Roland Joffé* The Mission , a.k.a. Cheung fo, by Johnnie To* The Mission , 1980 German play by former East German playwright Heiner Müller, also known as The Task- Music :* The Mission , the original score album of the 1986 film by Ennio Morricone*...
. 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."
To portray Madrid in the 1930s, a part of the film was filmed in Luján, Argentina
Luján, Buenos Aires
Luján is a city in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina, located 68 kilometres north west of the city of Buenos Aires. The city was founded in 1755 and has a population of 94,000 ....
.
Reactions
Wes Bentley, who portrays Manolo in the film, stated "There Be Dragons rivals American Beauty (film)American Beauty (film)
American Beauty is a 1999 American drama film directed by Sam Mendes and written by Alan Ball. Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a middle-aged magazine writer who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend, Angela...
in character". In that 1999 film he portrayed a troubled teenager, Rick Fitts.
The film was not well received either at the box office or by critics. Based on 19 published review, Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
gives the film a score of 33 out of 100. Out of 35 reviews archived by Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, only 4 were positive, giving the film a score of 11%, while among the reviews sent by the audience, 77% liked it. With an estimated budget of $36,000,000, during its opening weekend the film collected $705,537 at the US box office, compared to $1,251,124 in Spain. Critics generally praised the film's production values but panned Joffé's screenplay and direction. Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden is an American writer, music critic, film critic, and poet.Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963...
, of the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, described the film as an "interminable two-hour Sunday school sermon punctuated with battlefield carnage." Some of the positive reviews stated: "There Be Dragons has class written all over it" (Washington Post), "“Luminous and thought-provoking" (New York Post), "“Demonstrat[es] an increasingly rare sense of scope and pageantry" (Variety).
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."
External links
- The Dragons of the Spanish Civil War, Spanish review by Enrique Sánchez Costa.
Commentary during production
- Fr. John Wauck priest of Opus Dei blogs on his experiences on the set of the movie There be Dragons
- A live Press Conference transcript about “THERE BE DRAGONS”, a film directed by Roland Joffe (October 29th, 2009)
- Video about the film from Rome Reports
- Empire on line
- Lifesite news
- America Magazine
- New York Times
- A compilation of data about the film with videos and images