Philomena

"Philomena" (2013) is mostly based on a true story. However, to the extent that the film is noteworthy and, indeed, thought-provoking, the picture is entirely fiction. The true part of the story is disheartening: a young Irish girl, Philomena, becomes pregnant out of wedlock; abandoned by her own father, she is forced into servitude with the Magdalene Sisters where her child is delivered. The vicious nuns allow the young woman only one hour daily interaction with her son. The toddler is, then, trafficked, sold to the highest bidders who happen to be an American couple. Fifty years later, Philomena embarks on a quest with a British journalist, Martin Sixsmith, to locate the lost boy. "Philomena" is an "odd couple" buddy movie constructed around a road-trip. The Irish woman is working-class, a bit salty in her diction, but very pious. The journalist is the epitome of an urban sophisticate, a writer who has been sacked from his job with the BBC and who salves his wounds by threatening to write a book about Russian history (he served at the Moscow desk of the BBC). The modest pleasure afforded by "Philomena" arises from the interplay between these mismatched characters. The journalist is cynical, analytical, and angry -- he perceives of journalism, generally, as forum for settling old scores and he views his reporting on Philomena as a vehicle for an attack on the Catholic Church. Philomena perceives her mistreatment at the hands of the nuns -- torture that included denial of pain medication during a difficult breech delivery -- as, more or less, warranted by her sins and she remains loyal to the Church. Predictably enough, the journalist tries to persuade Philomena to hate the Church, but, of course, the old woman's kindness and fundamentally gentle and forgiving nature prevail and the film depicts the writer's gradual dawning awareness that his own hard-hearted perceptions of the world are mistaken. On paper, and baldly described, "Philomena" sounds much worse than it is. In fact, the characters are interesting and complex and their motives profoundly mixed -- the film's success is largely due to the excellence of its principals: Judi Dench as Philomena and Steve Coogan as Martin Sixsmith, the writer. Philomena is not an innocent but rather a canny, somewhat bawdy, retired nurse; she is apparently a heavy drinker. Coogan's character, although projecting callous indifference, is, in fact, confused by his anger at the world, wounded, and, more than a little clueless. A running gag in the film, which is as a whole quite funny, involves Philomena telling Sixsmith the plot of various romantic novels that she reads and, then, revealing twists in the narrative with the words: "You didn't see that coming did you, Martin?" True to this narrative ethos, "Philomena" delivers four or five genuinely surprising plot twists and, indeed, you "don't see them coming." These surprises keep the audience interested and propel the plot forward. The time-honored story of mismatched buddies on a road-trip, accordingly, is enlivened by unexpected developments in the narrative. Interestingly, the central theme in the film, the debate between an atheist and pious believer, is the aspect of the movie that is wholly invented. In a Q & A appended to the DVD of the film, Coogan acknowledges that he is half-Catholic and also half-Irish and that the picture was a vehicle for him to deal with unresolved feelings toward the Holy Roman Catholic Church. In actuality, the real Philomena Lee is Protestant, an Anglican, and, apparently, not religious at all. (Supplements to the DVD show an exceptionally handsome elderly woman who appears to be highly sophisticated, articulate, and elegantly self-possessed; indeed, in the documentary supplement, the real Philomena Lee seems more confident and gracious than the somewhat oafish comedian. This lady looks like the wife of a corporate executive and is nothing like the character portrayed in the film.) The picture is fluently, if unobtrusively directed by Stephen Frears, and the movie looks like a well-composed, high-budget TV show -- Coogan wrote the script and selected the cast and crew and it's apparent that he doesn't want mere "style" obstructing the spectator's view of his comic turns and Judi Dench's "Masterpiece" theater acting. The film is somewhat disappointing and there is, perhaps, not much to it; this is appropriate since the subject matter is also disappointing: Philomena never meets her lost son. The great road movies, for instance Wenders' "Kings of the Road" or Risi's "Il Sorpasso", feature strange landscapes, idiosyncratic locations, and are generously packed with encounters with curious and remarkable minor characters. These films are poetry whereas "Philomena" is content to remain prose. The landscapes are all more or less equivalent: London is like Washington D. C. minus the Lincoln Monument and the scene-setting relies upon the broadest stereotypes. Most of the film is dialogue between the two main players, something that is fine if you have Judi Dench and Steve Coogan as your protagonists. (But the best and most lyrical scene in the film is a colloquy in which Philomena interrogates a giant Mexican who is making an omelet for her at an Embassy Suites style hotel -- this sequence embodies the charm of the authentic road movie mostly eschewed by the rest of the film.) Throughout the film seems in a race neck-to-neck with maudlin sentimentality, but, in the end, the film wins, if only by a hair's breadth.