Philomena (2013)

Films such as The Magdelene Sisters (2002) gave us an introduction and insight to the cruel culture of Ireland during the 20^th century up to and including the 1970’s whereby pregnant unmarried girls were removed from their community and placed in convent run laundries. Until the stories began to be exposed in recent years, this picture of pregnancy being seen as a terrible sin requiring God’s punishment, was unknown to everyone outside of Ireland. How could you challenge or criticise sisters of charity for their support of unmarried mothers? Especially when you could not see what the regime was like or see what happened to their children.

What in fact they were doing was keeping young women captive and forcing them to work in commercial size laundries while their babies were being nurtured and prepared for adoption – in some cases in return for big money.

Philomena comes into this genre of storytelling from the point of an ageing woman who is now a grandparent and who in the 1950’s had been placed into such a convent laundry after becoming pregnant. Her mother had died and there was nobody to care for her and a baby. The convent sisters will now regard her as having “fallen” pregnant and will ensure that she will be judged accordingly. “Did you take your nickers down, girl?”

We come into the story after Philomena’s daughter has met ex BBC news reporter Martin Sixsmith at a social function. He is offered the chance to take an interest in Philomena’s story on the day that her daughter had discovered that her mother had given birth to a boy fifty years ago to the day, who at the age of three had been removed and given to an American couple for adoption. Would Sixsmith write a human interest story about her mother and her lost boy? The only way in which he could agree would be to find out what happened to him. This will take them to America.

The story is driven by the two central characters, Philomena who is played by Judi Dench and Sixsmith who is played by Steve Coogan. Both put in non-competing performances which deliver emotional scenes of anger and depression in the story climax. The early scenes are developed around a warm and caring relationship with wry humour as a mortar for their characters. Philomena has a dry, caring and forgiving nature founded on her Catholic faith. Coogan plays his part with alarming straightness, only once maybe showing a tiny glimpse of his earlier Alan Partridge days. The combination of Philomena’s forgiveness, tempered by doubt which frequently helps to change her mind and make quick turnaround decisions, and Sixsmith’s frustration driven by his determination to seek the truth, delivers the perfect story.

At one point in the story we discover what actually happened to Philomena’s (now adult) son and we wonder where the story will now go. However, the point of the film and this story is in the ending,  where confrontation to expose the truth leads to resolution and from Philomena, forgiveness.

“She might forgive you”, says Sixsmith, “…..but I can’t”.