The Making of Romero

"THERE WERE TIMES WHEN I THOUGHT OSCAR WAS ALIVE," said Bishop Ricardo Urioste at a special screening for San Salvador's bishops of a new film about Archbishop Oscar Romero. The movie that brought their slain colleague to life for Urioste, the vicar general of the diocese of San Salvador, is Paulist Pictures' new release Romero, which stars Raul Julia in a stunning portrait of the last three years of the martyr's life.

Romero is the first commercial Hollywood film developed by a church-based production company, but for those accustomed to the cut-corner world of religious filmmaking, it is a welcome change. Although the film was made for only $3.4 million -- peanuts by Hollywood standards -- it was supplemented by "$10 million of love," according to producer Father Ellwood Kieser, the Paulist priest who founded and directs Paulist Pictures. Almost everyone involved, Kieser said, worked for the union minimum as a "labor of love," including Julia, who accepted one-seventh of his usual salary for his starring role.

Since there have been so few major motion pictures about modern "heroes and martyrs," Romero invites comparison with Richard Attenborough's 1982 Oscar-winner on the life of Gandhi. The comparison is unfair, since Attenborough's epic -- which the veteran director called his life ambition -- cost seven times as much money as Romero and took three times as long to make, used hundreds of thousands of extras, and is a historically sweeping film that covers 55 years in grand scale. Romero's dimensions are more intimate and limited, with a look more akin to an independent production than that of a large studio mega-film.

One of the greatest difficulties in making a film about someone as well known as Romero is that many viewers enter the theater with a preconceived image of the man, and inevitably some will feel that the person on the screen fails to match their expectation. Like any biographic film, Romero paints a particular portrait of its subject, an image based on the necessarily subjective choices of the film-makers. Many of those who knew the archbishop, like Bishop Urioste, feel the movie powerfully captures the spirit of the martyred archbishop.

The movie is in many ways not a typical church picture. "I don't like it when they say that this is a Catholic film," Julia told Sojourners (see "Acting On Commitment, " page 27). "This is not a Catholic film. This is a film done by people from different persuasions, different faiths, or no faith at all." It was esteem for the courage and dedication of Romero, Julia said, more than any common faith assumptions, that inspired the making of the film.

OSCAR ROMERO WAS SHOT while celebrating Mass on March 24, 1980. A few days later, writer John Sacret Young -- subsequently the creator of TV's "China Beach" series -- wrote to Kieser to suggest that Romero's story would make a compelling movie-of-the-week. Kieser discovered that Jesuit James Brockman was writing a book on Romero (which has just been re-issued by Orbis Books under the title Romero: A Life).

After reading the manuscript and talking with Brockman, Kieser decided to take a movie proposal to the three television networks. All three turned it down -- saying the proposed movie was "too depressing," had "no love interest," and was "too controversial" -- so Kieser decided to make the Romero story a big-screen feature film.

Kieser hired Young as scriptwriter, and in March 1983 the two of them traveled to El Salvador to research the script, a trip Kieser described as "a real conversion experience." Once there, Kieser and Young met not only with Romero's friends and supporters, but also with his enemies.

Kieser remembers a conversation with a rich couple who said they "couldn't stand" Romero, criticizing the archbishop, among other reasons, for ending the practice of private baptisms for the babies of the elite. "Imagine my child being baptized with a bunch of Indians," the woman told Kieser.

The couple defended the actions of the oligarchy in El Salvador, telling Kieser, "We don't want anything that doesn't belong to us. We just want to live like the North Americans do." The night Romero was killed, the couple went to a party to celebrate.

Kieser said he was shocked by the "false values" and hatred behind their words, but it was the terrorism spawned by such values that most deeply affected him. "One morning we went out with one of the human rights groups and uncovered two mass graves in a lava field outside of town, one with 11 skeletons in it, another with four," Kieser told Sojourners. "Each of the bodies had their thumbs tied behind their back with piano wire, and each of them had a three- or four-inch hole in the back of their head. I saw a kind of evil there -- a Nazi kind of evil -- that I had never seen before."

Kieser also saw in El Salvador a church courageous and vital in the face of death. At the time of his visit, an average of seven people a night were murdered by death squads in San Salvador. Three nuns, nine priests, and more than 3,000 church workers had been killed up to that time. "Just to run a [Christian] base community down there makes a person liable for death squad action," Kieser said.

Despite the threat, the religious community in El Salvador has shown a selfless perseverance in its work with the poor. "I ran into a young nun who was setting up a base community," Kieser said. "I asked her, 'Sister, aren't you worried? Aren't you concerned that they might kill you?' And she just said, with a total absence of self-dramatization, 'No more than any other Salvadoran.' That to me was real Christian hope. That was resurrection."

KIESER'S EL SALVADOR EXPERIENCE cemented in him the commitment to produce Romero. "I went to El Salvador saving, 'This would be a nice movie to make.' I came back from El Salvador saying, 'I've got to make this movie, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many times we get rejected.'"

Actor Julia said the making of the film sparked a conversion within him, too. Julia said he listened to recordings of Romero's diaries and sermons each night during the shooting of the film, not just for their content but for their emotional tone, "searching for the essence of the man."

"He was not just playing Oscar Romero," producer Kieser said. "In a very real way, he became Oscar Romero. I was surprised how deeply Raul had penetrated Romero's character and how fully he understood it."

"I had been a lapsed Catholic," Julia said, "and I had what you might call a conversion back to my faith during the filming. What impressed me the most about Romero is that he saw the people who came to his church as the church. The church was not an intellectual matter for him; it was a living experience."

The cast and crew that Kieser assembled came from Mexico, Australia (the home of director John Duigan), and the United States. Kieser launched the picture by offering a Mass, one of four he celebrated during the shoot. "Let's make a film worthy of the man," he said in his homily.

"I wanted to focus for them that we were doing this for God, about God, and also with God," Kieser said, "and to draw the community together. Before the Mass, to the Mexicans we were still gringos. Afterwards, we were brothers and sisters."

The shooting of the film was not without its problems. The Catholic bishop of Cuernavaca, Mexico, where the filming was to take place, was reluctant to allow the use of church buildings for the movie. The bishop asked Kieser, "Is this picture going to be a platform for radical liberation theology?" Kieser responded, "Look, Bishop, I'm not doing a theological dissertation, I'm telling the story of a saint, a man of God, a man of the gospel, a man of prayer, a man of the church, a man of tremendous loyalty to the Holy Father." Kieser said the bishop sighed in relief, and asked, "What do you want, Father? We'll give you anything we can."

The film-makers also sought the assistance of the Mexican military. In Oliver Stone's film Salvador, Mexican soldiers portrayed those of their neighbor to the south. Salvadoran leaders were upset seeing the Mexicans portraying Salvadorans committing atrocities and requested that it not happen again.

Mexican military officials at the highest level decided that Romero should not be made in Mexico because it portrayed the Salvadoran military in an unflattering light, and they tried to get the Mexican civilian film bureau to revoke permission to film there. The film organization refused. Eventually the military, while refusing to help the film-makers, agreed not to hinder or harass them either, and the filming continued.

AT ITS HEART, ROMERO is simply the story of a man's conversion. Oscar Romero was chosen archbishop of San Salvador because it was perceived that the conservative bishop would "make no waves" for the ruling oligarchy. The film begins with Romero warning his Jesuit friend Father Rutilio Grande (Richard Jordan), who is helping to organize poor farmers, against "going too fast." In his inaugural sermon as archbishop, Romero warns against "radical ideas" and says the church must "keep to the center."

Even as Romero attempts to maintain a middle-of-the-road approach to the growing violence that is tearing apart his country, he is emotionally tortured by the evident suffering of his people -- yet held back by his privileged upbringing, his retiring and accommodating personality, and his desire that the church be a "stabilizing influence" on the country's discord.

It is the death-squad murder of his friend Grande, and his pastoral relationship with the families of the hundreds of people "disappeared" -- murdered by National Guard soldiers or right-wing death squads -- that finally push the reluctant Romero to move from his safe, non-committal stance. Agonizing over his response to his friend's death, he asks a woman who came to him for help, "What do you think I should do?" The woman, surprised that the powerful archbishop would ask a poor peasant such a question, replies hesitantly, "It's so bad here ... Someone has to take a stand."

Faced with human suffering, Romero confronts the dilemma that all people of compassion must confront: either become numb to the pain of those around or begin to take action on their behalf. Ultimately, he cannot ignore the poverty and suffering of his people, and finally compassion -- not politics or ideology -- compels him to choose sides, to take a stand on behalf of the poor, effectively signing his own death warrant. Julia's Romero is transformed -- almost against his will -- from timid scholar to intrepid voice of the poor in a penetrating and convincing metamorphosis, a role some have extolled as having Academy Award potential.

The movie has been criticized as painting a too-stark contrast between good and evil. Those most familiar with El Salvador are quick to defend the film's depiction of the country as realistic, if not understated. "I've lived in El Salvador, and, if anything, the movie toned down the repression there," said Eileen Purcell, head of the Washington, D.C.-based SHARE Foundation, a non-profit organization that works with displaced and returned refugees in El Salvador. "Every Salvadoran who has seen the film has been stunned by the degree that it captured the fear."

Purcell's only criticism was that the movie "didn't quite accurately portray the magnitude of the popular movement, or the community spirit of the people." But the film's release "couldn't be more timely," Purcell said, as U.S. policy-makers are currently in a process of assessing U.S. policy toward El Salvador. "Anyone committed to social justice should see this film."

The movie opened in September with benefit premiere showings across the country co-sponsored by the SHARE Foundation and Paulist Pictures. The premieres, including sold-out performances in several cities, raised nearly $20,000 for Salvadoran refugees in Honduras.

Romero is not without its flaws. The film is mis-rated at PG-13 -- some would question whether a 13-year-old should be exposed to such violence. None of the violence, however, is gratuitous; it merely reflects the horrible reality of the savagery that poisons contemporary El Salvador.

The movie is also marred by the relative absence of women. Many of the heroes in El Salvador's fight for freedom are women, and their tale goes largely untold here. That deficiency is not surprising, since -- as a cleric in a church that refuses to ordain women -- Romero's companions are mostly other male priests, and this story is primarily the archbishop's.

THE MASS MEDIA IN THIS COUNTRY have not often served as a catalyst for progressive social change. Prophetic truth-telling has not been Hollywood's strong suit, especially when the truth told is contrary to the prevailing winds out of Washington. Romero is one of those few and welcome exceptions that actually hold the promise to shape the very reality they record. Variety, the magazine of the film industry, went so far as to say that Romero "has the potential to become one of the most politically influential films of the 1980s."

To have that kind of impact, the film must be seen by a wide audience. With a limited promotion and distribution budget, it could easily remain on the fringes of popular consciousness, unnoticed by a public largely ignorant of the issues involved and disinclined to spend its entertainment dollars to have basic premises challenged. If Romero fails commercially despite its significance and beauty, the loss would be doubly unfortunate; even moderate success at the box office would enable Kieser to make his next planned film, a life of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day.

Archbishop Oscar Romero's story would be important to tell even if the violent chapter of El Salvador's history that is depicted in the film were ended. Unfortunately, widespread repression against the church and other Salvadorans continues to escalate.

Shortly before his murder, Bishop Romero pleaded with then-president Jimmy Carter to stop U.S. funding of El Salvador's murderous regime and urged Salvadoran soldiers to stop the repression and lay down their arms. The tragedy is that Romero's message still echoes unheeded today, nearly a decade later, as kidnapping, torture, and murder are still the instruments of official repression. As the movie so dramatically illustrates, the cost of disregarding Romero's plea is paid in the blood of the people.

Romero knew that his stance on behalf of the poor put his own life at risk. "If they kill me," the archbishop said, "I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. Let my blood be a seed of freedom, and a sign that hope will soon be a reality."

Oscar Romero, indeed, lives on in the hearts of the Salvadoran people. His story is ultimately a testimony that the transforming power that changed Romero is still alive, and a promise that death, finally, is not the victor.

If this daring film helps the martyred saint to live again for its audiences, then it will have succeeded in a manner that is rare and exceptional for its medium. And that itself is an extraordinary sign of hope -- and, perhaps, a seed of freedom for a long-suffering people.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.