Padre Pio: A breathtakingly intense Shia LeBeouf lifts Abel Ferrara’s messy history

The holy men in turmoil at the heart of Martin Scorsese’s Silence and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed look positively fun-loving set beside Shia LeBeouf’s tortured Italian saint. Directed by the controversialist Abel Ferrara, this portrait of the cult-worshipped Capuchin crafts a superhero origins-style story for the title character, set against a nervy political backdrop.

At the end of the first World War, men return from the front lines to the grim immiseration and feudalism of San Giovanni Rotondo. The affliction and self-flagellation of the future saint Francesco Forgione are tied, in a script written by the director and Maurizio Braucci, to the blood of the oppressed people. The prospect of “free” elections only antagonises the ruling class. Vicious inequality and murderous brutality inspire covert communist meetings and revolutionary fervour. Unhappily, and fatally, the organised peasants are persuaded to wait for a rigged democratic outcome.

This bloody history runs parallel to Padre Pio’s spiritual reckoning. It’s impossible not to think of allegations made against LeBeouf when a demon accuses him of having his “narcissistic way” with women, words that echo the actor’s public apology.

The fiercely committed LeBeouf, who lived in a Capuchin monastery and who reportedly converted to Catholicism during production, brings a breathtaking intensity to the role. The scale of his reaction when Asia Argento, playing a mysterious “Tall Man”, confesses incestuous feelings toward his daughter dwarves the surrounding mountainous terrain. Nobody does evil like Ferrera, and the spiritual dimensions of his best-known films, The Funeral, Bad Lieutenant and Addiction, have finally landed on a genuine spiritual subject and conduit.

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Unhappily, Ferrara demanded that his Italian cast deliver their dialogue in staccato English. Polemic and history delivered in a second (or third) language are more than many of the players can manage. The narrative strands can feel maddeningly disconnected, but in its messy, imperfect way Ferrara’s film is wrestling with a dynamic – cloistered prayer or external action? – that has divided the Catholic Church since its inception.

The sins and injustices of the outside world find terrible expression in St Pio of Pietrelcina’s body and imperfect expression in Ferrara’s 22nd feature.