Philomena [DVD]

Bought this for my mum, mum enjoyed the movie

A few bad apples can spoil the barrel, they say, and there’s truth in it. But sometimes I wonder if the barrel itself, as cause of the bad apples, doesn’t need replacing. If the bad apples in this case are immoral nuns in the Roman Catholic Church, the barrel is the Church.The Church and its ideas came into being at time when the world was radically different than it is today. Knowledge was limited, superstition rife, miracles believed in for lack of accurate explanations and understanding. The Church may have been useful and important at such a time, but why should it be now? Why all the followers, believers, devotees? If one says faith, fine. But one can have faith in anything, believe in whatever one wants, whatever is personally deemed important. The Church’s claim to be holder of some special faith is void, a historical and institutional anachronism. The claim was accepted when people knew no different, when alternatives seemed non-existent. Now they are not.But believe in the Church if one must. If it provides comfort, solace, strength, hope, meaning, these are fine and good. But they aren’t my point. My point is what’s illustrated in the film — how bad ideas, originated by and in the Church, can cause terrible harm when administered unquestioningly by functionaries within it — in this case, rigid, dogmatic, unfeeling nuns for whom interpretations of morality in scripture were more important than actual morality based in human lives. Their dogma, created by their religion, thus may be put in the dock. No final judgement is rendered by this fine film (which is one more reason, among many, why I think it fine). Instead, the ending is deliberately kept open so that everyone can decide freely for themselves. Other judgements are for others to make. Mine is this: guilty as charged (both nuns and Church, bad apples and barrel).Why was the child of Philomena taken from her by the wing of the Church in which she was incarcerated? Because she was declared an unfit mother. On what basis? On the fact that she was young, poor, unwed. Strike one, two, three, you’re out, you lose. No child, no motherhood.But what the nuns and Church did not understand or care to, evidently, is that Philomena loved her baby. She loved motherhood too. She loved being a mother as much as she loved her baby. Love saturated her. Her child meant the world to her. And this love, faithful and enduring, never wavered and died.Thus her tragedy and heartbreak.The journalist who helps tell Philomena’s story symbolises a kind of secular conscience. He wants answers, evidence, accountability, justice. He wants villainy exposed, judged, condemned. He wants those responsible for Philomena’s suffering and loss brought to book. Which is why he’s fearless and relentless. The deeper he digs into her story the angrier he becomes. For Philomena her loss is always personal. For Martin Sixsmith, the journalist, it’s also political, and his mission becomes one of exposing the dirty politics and hypocrisies of the Church. By the end he succeeds. He locates those responsible for the injustices done to Philomena.Philomena herself is more ambivalent. She’s a victim, true. She acknowledges it. But her journey transcends politics. Her son, deceased in adulthood, cannot be brought back. Even justice cannot do this. There are no miracles. So in a way justice is moot, pointless, futile. At least for her. Her loss is personal, so she can’t or won’t look beyond it. For her there’s no institutional evil in the Church per se. Others can make this claim for themselves if they wish. She will not.So her story, thus open-ended, remains interesting, complicated, controversial. In some people the film touches a nerve because it goes deep into their interpretations of themselves and the world, including the Church. Thus for them a lot may ride on these interpretations. That’s my feeling at least from reading some of the commentary in other reviews of the film. So let me just state my view that civility and decency are civilised virtues and values, and that some among the religious would do well to remember this.Since the film allows me to judge, I will.Philomena should have had a better life with the child she loved. They should have shared their lives together (and we know from the film that the son never forgot his origins, and by extension never stopped thinking about his mother). Instead, both child and that better life were taken from her by a Grand Inquisitor called the Roman Catholic Church.Crime doesn’t pay, they say, but I also wonder about that too sometimes.

Well worth a watch

I am not religious, ditching the tyranny of superstitious nonsense around the same time as I started consuming horror novels. I am not quite sure these two events are unrelated! There are very many reasons that the world would be a better place without the medieval, life-stealing stupidity of following the stone-age thinking brewed up in our brutal past and Philomena's story is yet another strong argument that Belief with a capitol B is so much more trouble than it's worth.I mean, really, who apart from Stone-Age grunting pseudo-ape men in a violent and misogynistic past could dream up such errant nonsense that having sex outside an invisible friend sponsored liaison is a Sin? A big fat Sin, as well, more dreadful and morally harmful, if the nasty nuns are to be believed, than almost anything. The Sin of being an unmarried mother in Ireland in 1951 was seen as so very bad it was used to justify all manner of abhorrent treatment. Philomena and other girls in this situation were effectively incarcerated - a supposedly benevolent act - in return for allowing them to have their sinful babies, keeping mother and babies hidden away from society until the children could be adopted. The vicious bullies who did this, sisters of Christ, justified their pernicious nastiness, like so many other despicable acts in the history of humans, through reference to the Good Book.And this grievous crime is the plot driver for this gentle and thoughtful adventure in redemption. Cynical, grizzled journalist Martin Sixsmith, ignominiously sacked by New Labour as the besieged minister Stephen Byers tries to save his own hide, decides tell Philomena's human interest story some fifty years after her baby was taken to America by adoptive parents. Martin and Philomena go on the trail of her son and very soon it becomes clear that the Catholic Church's appalling behaviour did not stop at the selling of babies to Americans.Steve Coogan gives a brilliantly unstated performance as Sixsmith, a character fizzing with his own anger and bitterness, far more it turns out that the much more traumatically treated Philomena. Judi Dench delivers a down-to-earth believability in Philomena that never has you questioning her character's working class Irish heritage. Sixsmith's intellectualism is no match for the simple power of a mother robbed of her son and when the time comes it is he who is not able to forgive the authorities for treating her so badly.A powerful argument for humanity over dogma, for hope and redemption over bitterness and anger. In the end Philomena's capacity to forgive, drawn as it is from the simplicity of her still unquestioned faith, despite the horror dished out to her by the church, is more than a match for Sixsmith's supercillious, often arrogant zeal. Whilst she learns the fate of her son, the cynical journalist, far to clever for his own good, is humbled by her quiet nobility to doing the right thing by her.**** (Four Stars)

Looking forward to watching it.

Great film, great cast and the DVD it's self never failed. Again excellent film

Having missed this wonderful film in the cinema, and read the book in the meantime (please see my separate review of the Kindle edition), I have now been able to enjoy it on DVD. I can only echo the very high praise it has rightly received. The film, together with the DVD special feature "The Journey of Philomena", tells much more of Philomena's own story than the book, which concentrates more on her lost son. In this respect the book and the film complement each other very well as two sides of the same coin. I would just add a minor criticism of some possibly misleading comments on the DVD packaging which variously describe it as "funny", a "comedy", and even "hilarious". It is true that there are some great and human "one liners" in it which raise a ready smile, but the film as a whole is far from being a comedy in the normal sense (though perhaps just maybe in the Shakespearean meaning of the word, as having at least a semi-happy ending). On the whole, though, although told with a light touch this is a very serious and thought-provoking story which should not be trivialised. One final point: I have seen a few reservations expressed about Steve Coogan's part in the film. I can only say that I think he is excellent.

Great film with great acting. Amusing.