Philomena

My wife and I have seen four of the Oscar best-picture nominees, Philomena, Twelve Years a Slave, Nebraska and American Hustle.  Of these, Philomena is clearly the best picture.

Why?  Well, of course, it stars Judy Dench.  Who’s better?  And her co-star, Steven Coogan is first rate as well.  Not only that, but, along with Jeff Pope, he wrote the screenplay.

And it is the screenplay more than the acting that makes this movie great. The story, which is a true story, has deep significance, eternal significance one might even say.  Based on the book Philomena by Martin Sixsmith (Sixsmith, played by Coogan, is the journalist who help Philomena unravel the mystery of her son’s life), the movie tells the story of an Irish woman who got pregnant out of marriage as a young girl, gave up her child to the nuns, watched helplessly as her child was spirited away while she worked in the convent’s laundry, and then as an older woman set about to find her child.

When Philomena and Sixsmith seek information about her son, the nuns deny them access to all records and conversations and lie to them again and again.

The story reaches its climax when Philomena realizes that her son had been trying to find her for years, that he had been to the convent in search of her, and that his body is, in fact, interred on the convent burial grounds.  (He had died of AIDS in his forties.) 

At this point, Sixsmith is ready to tear the nuns limb from limb for their cruelty and perfidy.  But Philomena says simply, “I forgive you.”  She does it because she believes in a God who is forgiving.  She says to her journalist friend Sixsmith, “If I don’t forgive, I will be like you.  That must be terribly exhausting.”

And so we have the conflict between doing justice, that is, calling attention to the nuns’ hateful and misguided behavior toward Philomena and many other young girls, and forgiving them.  And perhaps Philomena gets both, for she gives Sixsmith permission to tell the story--which is a sort of justice.

People react differently to movies.  Even in our group which attended the movie, some felt she forgive too easily and some did not.  But we all, at the same time, wanted justice.  Justice and forgiveness.  It’s the tension between these two that makes for great religious art again and again.

Like all rich stories this film is about other things besides the justice/forgiveness conflict, things like sexuality, homosexuality, innocence and experience. Philomena is a film that says significant things. So do Nebraska  and Twelve Years a Slave, but of the three, in spite of (or maybe because of) its age-old theme, Philomena seemed the freshest and most engaging.

Final Note: Anyone reading this in the Sioux Center area can encounter this same tension if they go to see the Dordt College Theatre’s production of Doubt on February 27, 28, and March 1.