"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, Phiomena 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 out-and-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.

My thoughts

We must pray for Philomena, her mother who died young, her father, her brothers and sisters, the man who fathered her son, her son, and all of the sisters who took care of her when she was young.

We must pray for all parents who have given up children for adoption, all of the children, and all of the adopting parents and families.

We must pray for the sisters who worked in the Magdalene Laundries, caring for 10,000 women and their children.

This is an extremely sad story. Philomena's forgiveness of the sister who (allegedly) hurt her, stole her child from her, and sold him into bondage in America is a model for us to follow.

Some beautiful photography and great acting. I liked both Dame Judi Dench and Steven Coogan's interpretation of their roles.

Rebecca: "The film is schizophrenic."

The true events that inspired the story:

• Philomena was raised by sisters in an orphanage herself after the death of her mother.
• She became pregnant at age 18.
• She gave birth to a son.
• She worked in the Magdalene Laundries.
• She agreed to give her son up for adoption when she was 22.
• The sisters found her a job that allowed her to move out of the Laundry.

The fictional elements:

• Lee and Sixsmith never met with Sister Hildegarde:

Sister Julie said: ‘The film company confirmed to us in writing at an early stage of production that a second meeting with Sister Hildegarde would be incorporated into the film and dramatic license was the reason given to us.’ She said Sister Hildegarde, who died in 1995, had in fact been instrumental in reuniting many mothers with their children.

The reporter says he is interested only in the truth--he is held up as the skeptical hero--but he never questions the claim that babies were sold by the nuns. He exercises the very kind of 'blind faith' that he criticizes Christians for--he believes on someone else's say-so!

"I’d recently lost my job as a government communications director after a row with Alastair Campbell and Stephen Byers (it was about telling the truth) and I was at a loose end."

• Lee and Sixsmith never traveled to the United States together. All of the scenes and dialogue are purely imaginary.
• Dench's character says, "No one coerced me. I signed of my own free will."
• Lee's daughter discovered Michael Hess's identity before contacting Sixsmith. He helped find the American family and Hess's partner.

"Philomena Gets It Wrong."

For one, in the 1950s, the Catholic Church in Ireland was the only group caring for women in distress. They would welcome women in crisis and arrange adoptions for their unplanned children.

• There is no evidence that children were “sold” to the “highest bidder.”
• There is no evidence that women were forced into slave labor.
• And the “cruel, harsh” nuns that the film depicts were often the ones working hardest for family unification.
• Never did the Catholic Church imply that they burned the records in a fire.

Sixsmith:

"Why did God create such an appetite and decree that it could not be fulfilled?" Hidden assumption: it is good for us to do whatever we feel like doing. There is no role for chastity in life.

The Catholic Church should go to confession, not you!

Lee: "Just because he is in first class, it does not mean that he is first class."

Philomena: And after I had the sex, I thought anything that feels so lovely must be wrong.

Martin Sixsmith: @#$%&*! Catholics.

What alternative was there?

• Abortion
• Begging
• Prostitution

I liked Dench's character very much: "a little old Irish lady."

T. S. Elliot, "Little Gidding" ("Four Quartets").

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Links

• The Philomena Project.
• Philomena Lee: 'To think the nuns never told us my son was searching for me.'"