A movie that makes you want to find a nun and bitch slap her into next week. Then go to next week and bitch slap her again.
Philomena is the story of a woman looking for her son. We’ve kind of gotten used to the I Put My Child Up For Adoption, But Now Want To Find Them stories. Maybe there was a moral element to those stories as well, like Lady Edith Crawley on Downton Abbey. Many of these stories have a woman going away for a bit and then returning later, it seems to be more a matter of choice. And here it is a matter of choice as well, but the price paid for that choice is obscene and evil. All the more evil because the people committing the crimes are doing so in god’s name and consider it the correct course of action.
Catholics-and most religions-don’t shine as brightly in films as they did in the days of The Bells of St Mary and The Trouble With Angels. The once kind Father is now a pediphine and the sweet Sisters are all sadists of the highest order. They are cruel and evil and vile because god wants them to be that way. And they wonder why no one wants to be a nun or a priest anymore.
There’s never any mention that the fathers of these children were sentenced to four years of hard labor or that they suffered any consequences at all for their ‘sins.’
Our hero Philomena doesn’t share my view. She doesn’t blame the Good Sisters and she appears to still believe that she deserved to be punished for her sin. I have to agree with the man writing Philomena’s story, I could never forgive them.
Philomena was a good movie and there were a number of funny moments mixed in with the horrors. It’s made clear that Philomena is a little dim and maybe that is part of the reason for her faith. Our other hero is a writer who proclaims that he does not believe in god and Philomena chides him for not being happy in that choice.
Philomena was a good movie, unless you happen to be an Irish Nun and end up being slapped several times a day by random strangers.
