MOVIE - Philomena

PG-13 (1:34)

Limited release 11/22/2013

Viewed 12/10/2013 at El Con with Sheila (Happy Birthday, Laura!)

RT Critic:  92  Audience:  91

Cag: 4.5 Liked it a whole lot 

Directed by Stephen Frears

The Weinstein Company

Steve Coogan (who also wrote and produced), Judi Dench

My comments:   (Spoilers abound, including a bit of ranting.....)  This was a wonderful movie.  Acting - yup, wonderful.  Story - bittersweet, with a little more bitter than sweet.  Leftover emotions - adding fuel to the fire to my deep dislike of the Catholic church. This was the retelling of a true story - with actual pictures of those real people just before the credits. Imagine being a young girl....say fifteen or sixteen.  Getting pregnant after one (pretty wonderful) night with a handsome young man.  Abandoned by your family, thus having not a soul in the world but a few other young mothers in your confined, ultra-religious environment (with lots of nasty nuns and a handful of nicer ones)...and an hour a day with your child.  Add to that being ostracized, demeaned, and put into slave labor for four years. And then, when your child is three, having him adopted without a goodbye, with absolutely no information about where he went or what happened to him.  Not your choice.  You would have NEVER given him away......  

       So much spite, so much hate and un-Christian acts from the nuns at this establishment.  Burning of all the records so that mothers and children could never reunite.  Lying.  Withholding information.  It was one thing for this to happen in the early 1950's, totally another for it to happen in 2003.  Grrrr....

     Dench and Coogan were oh-so believable together.  This relationship, if anything like the real one between Lee and Sixsmith, was pretty special.

  

Rotten Tomatoes:  Based on the 2009 investigative book by BBC correspondent Martin Sixsmith, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, PHILOMENA 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.

Walking to School - Eve Bunting

A Story from Northern Ireland
Illustrator: Michael Dooling
For: School-age kids
Published: Sept, 2008
Rating: 5
Read: Jan. 3, 2009
Endpapers: Deep Turquoise

I've grown up knowing about, but not understanding, the hate between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. Supposedly in 2007 some sort of peace agreement was begun. It seems there are always the few who relish the idea of this sort of friction, and do their best to keep it going. That appears to be Uncle Frank in this story.

Allison, a young Catholic girl in Belfast, Northern Ireland, must walk through a Protestant neighborhood to get to school. But the streets are lined with spitting, booing, yelling Protestants who make it really hard for the procession of Catholics to make their way. Allison hates it. On the second day someone pulls at her jacket and a button comes off. It rolls into the crowd and a Protestant girl her own age grabs for it. Allison thinks that the girl wants to triumphantly keep it, but she steps out into the street to hand it back. Allison then turns back and passes her lucky marble to the girl. The story ends:

I stare out of the window. What is she talking about? I don't feel like a hero. All I know is, I met a Protestant girl who was nice. She said she hated this fighting, and so do I. I think we could be friends, if we had the chance. I know we would.
If the grownups would let us.

There's an AUTHOR'S NOTE that gives a little more information.

The illustrations are oil on canvas, and very realistic. No white. Lovely writing, Eve Bunting can always be counted on to do it right! The illustrations are perfect for her story. This quote comes from the blurb about her on the back flap: "As a Protestant living in Ireland during "the Troubles," Eve Bunting saw prejudice from both religious groups. She say sthis story could have just as easily been about a Protestant child walking through a Catholic area ---"