Thought-provoking entertainment
It highlights the harsh morality of the 1950s.
DVD: Philomena
Reviewed by: Samantha Keogh
Review made possible by: SterKinekor
The harsh morality of the 1950s saw pregnancy out of wedlock besmirch a family’s name to the point where some young women were disowned by their kin and left to fend for themselves.
Some were taken in by the Roman Catholic Church and it fell to the tender (or otherwise) mercies of that denomination’s nuns to look after them and assist at the births. In return the women were forced to do chores around the convents and abbeys in which they were housed.
This is the setting for the start of the film Philomena – based on a true story – where, in an Irish abbey Philomena Lee is sheltered while her baby (Anthony) is born and eventually adopted by an American doctor and his wife.
Fifty years later Philomena convinces jaded and out-of-work political journalist Martin Sixsmith to put aside his scorn for “human interest” stories and help her find her son.
The two travel to America where they find Anthony had become Michael Hess, a gay chief legal adviser to two presidents and had died of Aids.
In the process it emerges that the nuns may have been paid by the adopted parents not only for Anthony but for all the children they found parents for and that many of the mothers did not want their children adopted.
A counter argument that has been advanced by some who have viewed the film is that the nuns were not paid but received donations, the amounts of which were agreed on between the adoptive parents and the nuns.
Semantics is a wonderful thing.
The movie is high drama and, while artistic licence may have skirmished with some of the truth of these adoptions, is an intense and watchable drama.
A deeply religious mother confronts the dilemma of whether the hurt she could cause people in looking for her lost son might be a bigger sin than conceiving him out of wedlock.
A cynical journalist relishes the opportunity to expose what he considers the reprehensible actions by the proponents of a religion he has long ago given up on.
And the nuns involved are unrepentant.
It’s good entertainment but exceedingly thought-provoking.
