Stephen Frears's ‘Philomena’ (1st review)

Philomena Lee was an Irish teenager who gave birth to a son out of wedlock in 1952. Under an ecclesiastical system of forced adoptions that existed in Ireland until 1990, unwed mothers were consigned to church-operated (and state-supported) Mother and Baby Homes, where they were routinely subjected to physical and emotional abuse. The church saw unwed mothers as degenerates, not fit to keep their children — among other humiliations, they were forced to recount their sexual encounters in detail to the nuns. Philomena was one of thousands of Irish girls consigned to four years of virtual indentured servitude and required to sign away parental rights to their babies, who were routinely sold off to wealthy American adoptive parents in exchange for generous donations.

Such a harsh and punitive system, of course, could be perpetuated only in a society that believed in the inherent sinfulness of fornication and relied on the Catholic Church — and especially its nuns, who had, after all, forsworn bodily pleasure altogether — to render judgment on all matters relating to sin. Whatever their neuroses, these Irish nuns sincerely believed they were doing God’s work, and of course the nuns’ cloistered lifestyle reinforced their sense of self-righteousness. But in the context of their own parochial time and place, they were doing their best to cope with a social problem with the limited psychological and emotional tools at their disposal. Their condemnation of girls like Philomena was perhaps no harsher and more unfair than the condemnation we now smugly heap upon them from the safe perspective of our own tolerant, cosmopolitan, therapy-oriented 21st-century American society.

New breed of nuns

As an adult, Philomena Lee stayed more or less faithful to the Church — which, she recently told the New York Times, gave her a good education and found her a job in a boys’ school in Liverpool, which led to her career as a psychiatric nurse and marriage to one of her colleagues — even as she remained haunted by the unknown fate of her lost boy. Fifty years after his birth, she enlisted the help of Martin Sixsmith, a former BBC journalist, to help her locate her son. At the convent in Roscrea, they found an entirely new breed of nun — young, diverse, polite, welcoming angels of mercy dressed in blue skirts and white blouses rather than austere black habits: very different from the rigid old harpies who had once terrorized Philomena. Yet on the essential question — who had adopted Philomena’s son? — these New Age nuns were resolutely unhelpful. The adoption records, they explained, had been lost (conveniently for them) in a fire years earlier.

But of course a fire is only a minor impediment in the age of Google. By browsing the Internet, Sixsmith identified Philomena’s lost son as Michael Hess, who became deputy chief legal counsel to the Republican National Committee as well as an important figure in the Reagan administration. He was also a closeted gay man who died of AIDS in 1995 without ever publicly acknowledging his homosexuality, lest it jeopardize his career. And, yes, Hess had twice visited Ireland to try to find his birth mother, but the nuns had declined to divulge any information. He requested that his ashes be buried at the convent where he was born in the hope that his mother would eventually find his grave, as indeed she did.

Deceptively profound

What are we to make of this story? A son is torn from his birth mother, but both of them turn out reasonably well. (In the film, Philomena observes that her son’s American adoptive parents gave him a better life than she could have provided.) Yes, she was subjected to unspeakable abuse; and yes, her son was exposed to homophobia; but she subsequently found a rewarding career and family, and he wound up working in the White House. From that narrative, the Church could almost argue that, in this case at least, its system of Mother and Baby Homes worked pretty much as intended.

Midway through the film, journalist Sixsmith, in Washington, phones his editor in London to report that there’s really no story here. The editor replies that Sixsmith has a contract, and so he must contrive something suitable for publication. Director Stephen Frears responds to the same absence of a dramatic arc by focusing on Philomena’s search for her son; but that search really amounts to little more than a few computer keystrokes, albeit hoked up with various car and plane trips, phone calls, temper tantrums, slammed doors, and other seemingly mandatory movie bits-of-business. Absent that manufactured drama, the film’s primary appeal lies in Judi Dench’s wonderfully nuanced performance in the title role as a simple but deceptively profound woman who demonstrates a surprising capacity to learn and grow from life’s disappointments as well as from her faith. (When Sixsmith gets on his high horse about her past mistreatment, Philomena serenely replies, “It must be exhausting” to be so angry.)

At the film’s conclusion, Philomena and Sixsmith confront the sole surviving nun from Philomena’s stay at the convent, the wrathful Sister Hildegarde, now arthritic and wheelchair-bound but unrepentant in her view that the loss of Philomena's son was appropriate penance for the sin of fornication. Sixsmith curses the old nun; Philomena forgives her; and as for me — well, I couldn’t help wondering: What’s Sister Hildegarde’s story? What were her hopes and dreams when she first took her vows? What sort of inner life has she led for 90-odd years? What force opened up the Church and Irish society alike to fresh ideas and relegated abusers like Sister Hildegarde to the sidelines? How does she feel now that the Church is forgiving sinners — even abusive priests — instead of punishing them? What chain of human events over 50 years transformed Hildegarde the convent denouncer into Hildegarde the cinematically denounced?

Now, there’s a story with a genuine dramatic arc.

To read another review by SaraKay Smullens, click here.