Film Review: Philomena. Must see.
Last night I watched Philomena, a film starring Dame Judi Dench (must adore) and Steve Coogan, based on the book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, based on the real-life story of Philomena Lee and her search to be reunited with her son Anthony, taken from her soon after his birth. Oh, man. It's an awesome social statement disguised as a feel-good movie.
I couldn't help but view the whole story from the perspective of a woman who is presently more than a little dismayed by the long, slow slide of women's rights in the United States at present. Because Philomena, but a child herself at 16, gives birth to her son Anthony in an "unwed mothers' home" at an Irish Abbey and is forced into four years' child labor, and her son is essentially sold by the nuns to wealthy Americans who wish to adopt him. He is but one of many.
Fifty years later, having been thoroughly been shamed into silence by the Catholic Church for her sin, she finally decides the sin of silence outweighs the original sin and decides to go public in her search for her son. (She had previously visited the Abbey numerous times but been turned aside due to the records having been "lost in a fire." In fact, they had been deliberately burned, we find out later.)
An interesting side story lies in the character of Martin Sixsmith, the journalist who helps Philomena only grudgingly at first: his high flying career as Press Secretary and previously as a journalist for BBC News has been brought down by scandal, and he's somewhat at a loss what to do with his life, depressed because he was sacked for what he thinks was no good reason: an errant email blown out of proportion. Now someone has offered him the opportunity to do a "human interest story," which he considers the lowest of the low.
"Human interest stories," in Sixsmith's mind, translate as stupid people doing stupid things they think are important but really aren't in the grander scheme, and the film doesn't take the final step in saying so, but as we all know, they most often are *women's* stories.
Philomena's story is a woman's story, so of little note to Sixsmith in the beginning. She is not educated, she is poor, and it is her daughter, working as a cocktail server at an higher class party he is attending, who brings Philomena's story to his attention. He presents it to the editor he was introduced to there as "something that really just fell into my lap."
What is truly fascinating is to watch his rising indignation as he learns more of her story. At first he gathers the details, and says crap like, "Good, that's excellent--for the story, I mean," learning that the nuns had refused to call for a doctor discovering Anthony was a breach birth, because Philomena had sinned, and deserved the pain as her punishment.
Just twenty minutes later into the film he is brushing his hands over the detritus covering the grave of a 14 year-old victim of childbirth at the Abbey, and his face betrays his appall. He begins truly crusading for Philomena, invested in her instead of just in the story.
But here is where the issue of rights becomes very sticky, because though he is invested in her, he begins to blur what he wants for her and what Philomena wants for herself. It's a very interesting dance in the film, because Philomena truly does need his help if she is going to reach all her objectives.
Ultimately, Sixsmith discovers Philomena's son, Anthony, became Michael Hess upon adoption, grew to become a lawyer and chief legal counsel of the RNC. And died eight years earlier. It's a devastating scene.
Philomena wishes to go home. Sixsmith's editor says he must stick with it and convince her to stay and finish out the story: good or bad ending.
Sixsmith does not, in fact, attempt to manipulate Philomena into staying. She has, in the meantime, had a change of heart, and wants to meet someone who knew her son and can tell her if he ever thought of her, of his first home, Ireland.
So they go off and meet with the closest friend they can find, and she tells them both that, no, Michael never mentioned Ireland. She gives Philomena a bunch of photos, and in one of them he's with his lover of many years, Peter.
Philomena accepts with great equanimity the fact her son was a "gay homosexual," as she claims she always suspected as much. But that she'd hoped he was at least bi-curious enough to leave offspring.
Sixsmith, of course, is fascinated by the implications for his story--how a closeted gay man served in the Republican National Convention and died of AIDS--but in the conversation that follows you can see him drawing the parallels between the secret Philomena kept for so many years and the one Anthony/Michael had to keep.
The film takes many twists and turns after this, but when eventually, through many tribulations, we discover the truth: that Michael did, in fact, think of Ireland, that his ashes are buried there at the Abbey in hopes his mother would find him there, and that the nun who knew the truth, despite the burned records, deliberately lied and withheld the truth from the dying Michael and Philomena out of bitterness, well. This was the most interesting confrontation to me. But not because Philomena finally got to confront one of the nuns who tormented her so in her youth, as representative of that close-minded, unforgiving, and indeed spiteful hand, jealous of the free sexuality the young girls there displayed. That was just cake.
The real moment was when Philomena cut Sixsmith off during his rant against the nun, saying, "It happened to me, not you. It's up to me what I do about it; it's my choice."
And what she does do is forgive Sister Hildegarde. I don't know if I could do that if it were me. Maybe I'm like Sixsmith and just not forgiving enough. But she's right: carrying that much anger around isn't a great idea.
Either way, she had the right of it, and to it.
And I love that this "human interest" story is a human rights story in disguise, and a story about choice, and women's bodies, and that this crusty old reporter got sucked into a righteous rant about it.
Because ultimately, feminism is about all of us.
Whoa, didn't mean to bend your ear, but there you go. It's a good movie. I blame Dame Judi Dench. :D
And apparently there's some hope that a screening of the film at the Vatican might lead to intact adoption records at other convents finally being opened up and letting other mothers and children be reunited. Go Philomena!
[ X-posted to Dreamwidth with
comments | How to use OpenID ]
I couldn't help but view the whole story from the perspective of a woman who is presently more than a little dismayed by the long, slow slide of women's rights in the United States at present. Because Philomena, but a child herself at 16, gives birth to her son Anthony in an "unwed mothers' home" at an Irish Abbey and is forced into four years' child labor, and her son is essentially sold by the nuns to wealthy Americans who wish to adopt him. He is but one of many.
Fifty years later, having been thoroughly been shamed into silence by the Catholic Church for her sin, she finally decides the sin of silence outweighs the original sin and decides to go public in her search for her son. (She had previously visited the Abbey numerous times but been turned aside due to the records having been "lost in a fire." In fact, they had been deliberately burned, we find out later.)
An interesting side story lies in the character of Martin Sixsmith, the journalist who helps Philomena only grudgingly at first: his high flying career as Press Secretary and previously as a journalist for BBC News has been brought down by scandal, and he's somewhat at a loss what to do with his life, depressed because he was sacked for what he thinks was no good reason: an errant email blown out of proportion. Now someone has offered him the opportunity to do a "human interest story," which he considers the lowest of the low.
"Human interest stories," in Sixsmith's mind, translate as stupid people doing stupid things they think are important but really aren't in the grander scheme, and the film doesn't take the final step in saying so, but as we all know, they most often are *women's* stories.
Philomena's story is a woman's story, so of little note to Sixsmith in the beginning. She is not educated, she is poor, and it is her daughter, working as a cocktail server at an higher class party he is attending, who brings Philomena's story to his attention. He presents it to the editor he was introduced to there as "something that really just fell into my lap."
What is truly fascinating is to watch his rising indignation as he learns more of her story. At first he gathers the details, and says crap like, "Good, that's excellent--for the story, I mean," learning that the nuns had refused to call for a doctor discovering Anthony was a breach birth, because Philomena had sinned, and deserved the pain as her punishment.
Just twenty minutes later into the film he is brushing his hands over the detritus covering the grave of a 14 year-old victim of childbirth at the Abbey, and his face betrays his appall. He begins truly crusading for Philomena, invested in her instead of just in the story.
But here is where the issue of rights becomes very sticky, because though he is invested in her, he begins to blur what he wants for her and what Philomena wants for herself. It's a very interesting dance in the film, because Philomena truly does need his help if she is going to reach all her objectives.
Ultimately, Sixsmith discovers Philomena's son, Anthony, became Michael Hess upon adoption, grew to become a lawyer and chief legal counsel of the RNC. And died eight years earlier. It's a devastating scene.
Philomena wishes to go home. Sixsmith's editor says he must stick with it and convince her to stay and finish out the story: good or bad ending.
Sixsmith does not, in fact, attempt to manipulate Philomena into staying. She has, in the meantime, had a change of heart, and wants to meet someone who knew her son and can tell her if he ever thought of her, of his first home, Ireland.
So they go off and meet with the closest friend they can find, and she tells them both that, no, Michael never mentioned Ireland. She gives Philomena a bunch of photos, and in one of them he's with his lover of many years, Peter.
Philomena accepts with great equanimity the fact her son was a "gay homosexual," as she claims she always suspected as much. But that she'd hoped he was at least bi-curious enough to leave offspring.
Sixsmith, of course, is fascinated by the implications for his story--how a closeted gay man served in the Republican National Convention and died of AIDS--but in the conversation that follows you can see him drawing the parallels between the secret Philomena kept for so many years and the one Anthony/Michael had to keep.
The film takes many twists and turns after this, but when eventually, through many tribulations, we discover the truth: that Michael did, in fact, think of Ireland, that his ashes are buried there at the Abbey in hopes his mother would find him there, and that the nun who knew the truth, despite the burned records, deliberately lied and withheld the truth from the dying Michael and Philomena out of bitterness, well. This was the most interesting confrontation to me. But not because Philomena finally got to confront one of the nuns who tormented her so in her youth, as representative of that close-minded, unforgiving, and indeed spiteful hand, jealous of the free sexuality the young girls there displayed. That was just cake.
The real moment was when Philomena cut Sixsmith off during his rant against the nun, saying, "It happened to me, not you. It's up to me what I do about it; it's my choice."
And what she does do is forgive Sister Hildegarde. I don't know if I could do that if it were me. Maybe I'm like Sixsmith and just not forgiving enough. But she's right: carrying that much anger around isn't a great idea.
Either way, she had the right of it, and to it.
And I love that this "human interest" story is a human rights story in disguise, and a story about choice, and women's bodies, and that this crusty old reporter got sucked into a righteous rant about it.
Because ultimately, feminism is about all of us.
Whoa, didn't mean to bend your ear, but there you go. It's a good movie. I blame Dame Judi Dench. :D
And apparently there's some hope that a screening of the film at the Vatican might lead to intact adoption records at other convents finally being opened up and letting other mothers and children be reunited. Go Philomena!
[ X-posted to Dreamwidth with
comments | How to use OpenID ]