Mark Reviews Movies: HESBURGH

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 25, 2019

In terms of filmmaking, Hesburgh is pretty routine, telling the life story of its eponymous subject through archival footage, interviews, and narration provided by the man's own written words. This, though, is an unexpectedly significant subject, and it's quite the life that he lived. His story almost needs a straightforward approach, if only so that we can take in the full scope of his influence.

The man is the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, a man whose sole ambition since childhood was to become a Catholic priest. With that goal achieved, he found himself the president of a prestigious university, the close friend of a pope, the friend and/or advisor to multiple Presidents of the United States, and a man willing and, more importantly, able to help move the country away from some of its most systemic forms of racial injustice.

Director Patrick Creadon presents Hesburgh, who liked be called "Father Ted," as a man ahead of his time, of the culture of the U.S., and of the doctrine of the Catholic Church. One may note that religious matters rarely seem to appear on his mind, revealed by way of his writings (narrated by that stalwart voice actor Maurice LaMarche), or in his actions, although that seems to be a matter of philosophy. Here, we suspect a man who believes that faith is only as worthy as its impact on the lives of people and the betterment of the world in which we live.

Other people clearly mattered to Hesburgh, from his students at the University of Notre Dame, who are honest—by way of what he did for them and how they didn't fear disagreeing with him—about their love for the man, to countless people, whom he never personally met, demeaned and disenfranchised by racist laws in the South. As far as we can tell, the man never had enemies, although a few people certainly did come to fear, distrust, or question his actions and beliefs. One of those people was Richard Nixon, who referred to Hesburgh in rather unflattering ways on some of those infamous tapes. If Hesburgh was an enemy, that was always on the other person's part. Even with Nixon, Hesburgh says that he simply lamented the loss of a friendship.

It's easy to talk about empathy, but here is a man who genuinely, truly, and unwaveringly lived in that state of compassion and understanding for others. To become a priest, many who knew him in the film note, is to live a life of solitude—to leave one's family, to abandon the possibility of having a wife or children, to live in the service of a higher power. There's no sense of loneliness in Hesburgh's writings, the testimonies of his friends and relatives, or his actions. More importantly, there is never a sense of trying to compensate for the loss of what could have been.

Hesburgh simply cared about people. His students, although joking about the priest's regular absences from the university (The official joke went as such: "What's the difference between God and Father Ted? God is everywhere, but Ted is everywhere but Notre Dame."), recount how his office and his counsel was available to them as long as the light was on. His driver recalls how the priest, although late for an appointment in Chicago, stopped to console a student whose father died and could no longer afford tuition. Without any prompting or promotion of his actions, Hesburgh made sure she was able to graduate from Notre Dame about four years later.

He didn't seek attention, but nonetheless, it came to him. He didn't seek praise, and perhaps that's why the attention came. The film documents his work on U.S. Civil Rights Commission, using his ability to bring people together, even political opponents, to agree to resolutions that would become the foundation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, after failing to persuade John F. Kennedy before his own change of heart just before his assassination.

Through his actions, it becomes clear that Hesburgh's belief was more than just disagreeing without being disagreeable. It was in uniting people and, in that union, showing that there is an inherently correct way, based in the humanity that binds everyone. When Martin Luther King Jr. was going to speak at Soldier Field, Hesburgh attended and spoke, even though the city's mayor and archbishop refused the invitation. It was the right thing to do.

The film doesn't lionize its subject, though, and it finds significant conflict between what would seem to be his progressive ideals and his initial reaction to student protests during the Vietnam War. Seeing his primary goal as a university president to be education (This put him at odds with Vatican on occasion), he enacted and enforced a policy that would suspend or even expel any student who continued to protest after being told to cease. Some were expelled, despite that meaning almost a guarantee of being drafted into combat.

That policy is how Nixon became his friend, a trend that started with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Hesburgh's evolution on the matter of the war after the killings at Kent State University, as well as his open opposition to Nixon's "Southern Strategy," led to the dissolution of that friendship—but only on the President's part.

Much—and much more than the aforementioned—happened in Hesburgh's life and varied career. It would be easy for this documentary to get lost amidst a simple recitation of anecdotes, relationships, and accomplishments. With Hesburgh, though, Creadon finds an affecting and inspiring through line, simply by showing a good man doing good in the world, for no other reason than that it was good and right.

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