"Philomena" (2013) movie review

• Based on The Lost Child of Philomena Lee by Martin Sixsmith.
• IMDB.
• Four Oscar nominations in 2014.
• Harvey and Bob Weinstein (Miramax, The Weinstein Company):
  • Priest (1994)--five morally debased priests.
  • The Butcher Boy (1997)--Sinead O'Connor as a foul-mouthed Virgin Mary
  • Dogma (1999)--a descendant of Joseph and Mary working in an abortion clinic.
  • 40 Days and 40 Nights--ridicules Catholic sexual ethics.
  • The Magdalene Sisters (2002)--vicious nuns.
  • "Bad Santa"--Santa as a vulgar, drunken sexual predator
  • "Black Christmas" (2006)--slasher/horror film.

• "Myths of the Magdalene Laundries."

"Philomena Never Found Her Son."

Lee never found her son: he died in 1995 and was buried on the grounds at the very convent that took her in when she was in need. She is lying about this because it fits with the lie about her looking frantically for him for 50 years. In the movie, she is depicted as searching for her son in the United States.

PBS, "Journey of the Real Philomena."

It tells the true story of an Irish Catholic girl forced by nuns to give up her son for adoption and her search for him decades later. “If I come out with my story, maybe it will help other women that were like me … maybe they’ll get the courage to try and find their children as well,” says Philomena Lee, the real Philomena. She has launched the Philomena Project to raise awareness and encourage the Irish government and Catholic Church to make adoption records public.

Buffalo Film Society.

Based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, PHILOMENA focuses on the efforts of Philomena Lee (Dench), mother to a boy conceived out of wedlock — something her Irish-Catholic community didn’t have the highest opinion of — and given away for adoption in the United States. In following church doctrine, she was forced to sign a contract that wouldn’t allow for any sort of inquiry into the son’s whereabouts. After starting a family years later in England and, for the most part, moving on with her life, Lee meets Sixsmith (Coogan), a BBC reporter with whom she decides to discover her long-lost son.

"Debunking Philomena."

Now that it has been nominated for four Oscars, "Philomena" is bound to attract a lot of attention. It should also attract attention for what it really is: a cruel caricature of nuns that is based on half-truths and outand-out lies. That it appeals to the worst appetite in anti-Catholic bigots is not debatable. "A film that is half as harsh on Judaism or Islam, of course, wouldn't be made in the first place," writes Kyle Smith in the New York Post, "and would be universally reviled if it were."

... mean-spirited Irish nuns oppress poor Catholic girls.

"‘Philomena’ another hateful and boring attack on Catholics."

The film can’t quite decide whether the young mother was forced to give up her son Anthony; it makes as look as though she was, but also includes a scene in which contemporary Philomena adamantly denies coercion.

Links

• The Philomena Project.