"Philomena" Review

The only Oscar nominee for Best Picture I did not get to see before the Academy Awards was "Philomena" because it did not come to my area on time. It arrived about a week later, and over spring break, I had the opportunity to see it. Like "Dallas Buyers Club" this one was eye-opening to me.

Rather than being about AIDS in America, it deals with corruption among Catholic nuns. In the 1950s, Philomena (her younger self played by Sophie Kennedy Clark and the older Philomena played by Judi Dench) is impregnated by a man she is not married to. Shunned by her parents, she seeks help from a convent where the nuns agree to provide basic living needs – including childcare – in exchange for working grueling hours of labor.

However, there is a catch: the nuns are free to give her child up for adoption without consent. Needless to say this happens, and she is never told where her child went. Fifty years go by without her telling anyone until she discloses the story to her daughter, who gets in contact with a bitter, out-of-work journalist named Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan). Seeing that there could be a good story from it, he and Philomena go on an adventure to find out what happened to her long-lost son.

Telling anything more about this movie would give away spoilers. A big part of its entertainment value is finding out what happened. Later on, it is revealed that there are more details to what the nuns did, and it makes them look even more awful.

A lot of the film  is about how differently Philomena and Martin Sixsmith look at what the nuns have done. The bitter journalist sees it as a reason to hate God, and he goes through several rants about why this makes it easy for him to not believe. Philomena, on the other hand, does not see it that way. Even though her faith is shaken at times because religious people have done bad things, she never loses her belief in God. Without spoiling anything, a major theme ends up being forgiveness.

The problem with this is while the film certainly tries to have an uplifting message, it is not nearly as powerful as it should be. Leaving the theatre, Sixsmith's rants stuck out in my mind more than the message of forgiveness. While the movie does address Philomena's distaste of the journalist's behavior towards other people, it does not seem as obvious as what he says about the nuns. This does not make the film bad at all. It is just a minor nit-pick looking at the film from surface level.

Judi Dench was nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in the 2014 Academy Awards for her portrayal of the title character. Having now seen this film, I understand why. She does an outstanding job playing a lovable, forgiving woman, who strives to treat people in the most Christian way possible. This is in stark contrast to the character I know her by: M from the James Bond films. In that franchise, Dench plays a cold, professional woman, who keeps her distance emotionally.

As M, she is more like Steve Coogan's portrayal of Martin Sixsmith. Recently unemployed, he is a bitter man who has learned to keep an emotional distance because of his profession in journalism. Coogan did a great job in his performance.

I give this film four out of five stars. It is definitely worth seeing, but it is not something you need to drop everything to watch right now.

Content: Rated PG-13. Keep in mind, this film was rated R originally before being re-rated on appeals. It was only that rating because it has two "F" words in it. While it does not show anything, the characters do talk about sex two or three times, which includes Philomena talking about how she enjoyed her sexual experience.