Your Film Professor

Philomena (2013, Stephen Frears), one of the most important films of 2013, is one in a long line of powerful contemporary films (Spotlight, The Magdalene Sisters, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, The Boys of St. Vincent) that excoriates the Catholic Church for its past heinous acts.

“Hiding” Symbolism

For me, there is one image that encapsulates Philomena’s deepness: While waiting for Philomena Martin wanders the grounds and comes upon a “hidden” part of the cemetery, small markers amongst grown over vegetation. Martin parts some foliage to reveal a tiny uncared for (the cross that is supposed to be attached to it is gone) headstone reading “Mother and Child Died in Childbirth” (because the cross is missing and the names are written on the crosses, we don’t get a name of the mother, suggesting I think that this choice was purposeful on Frears’ part, symbolizing that this particular inscription represents the disappeared and forgotten mothers lost to the Catholic Church’s abuses in general).

Uncovering the Forgotten

After reading its inscription, Martin casts his gaze to a sea of other similar markers, grown over vegetation suggesting neglect and as some of the markers seem to be swallowed up by the shrubbery, the message seems to be that there is a desire by the Catholic Church for these markers to be forgotten and disappeared, which, as we come to find out, the Catholic Church would love all too much if all of the crosses were to fall off and the vegetation were to cover over all of the small tombstones, disappearing them all into the fog of history. (Interesting too that Frears marks the end of this scene with just a faint whisper of a bell tolling as if to punctuate the sacred nature of Martin’s investigation, the need to uncover these markers of this monstrous act by the Catholic Church.)

The Sins of the Nunnery (and the Catholic Church)

As we come to discover, this obscured, forgotten part of the cemetery harbors the monstrous “sins” of the nunnery, the mothers and babies who died in childbirth over many past years. This attempt to “hide” their past speaks to the larger message of this unforgettable film: The theme of “hiding” monstrous acts or self-perceived ideological “sins” (which are, in turn, informed by monstrous violating acts!). Via Philomena’s testimony, we learn that the nunnery not only indifferently let young women (one as young as 14) and their newborns die (via a lack of proper facilities and medical attention) but as Martin so aptly sums up (instigated by Philomena’s desire to go to confession, to confess her “sins”): “What sins? The Catholic Church should go to confession, not you. ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I incarcerated a load of young women against their will, used them as slave labor, then sold their babies to the highest bidder.”

Other “Hidings”

That “hiding” of monstrous acts though only begins this disturbing motif, as we come to see that Philomena’s grown-up son Anthony/Michael has had to “hide” his gayness from his Republican colleagues and bosses (e.g., Ronald Reagan!) and Philomena herself has “hidden” her lost son from loved ones because she still believed her birth to be the result of a shameful “sin” (e.g., she had premarital sex with a man).

The Consequences of Unnatural Religious Doctrine

The deeper implication of this theme registers how devastating the unnatural ideology of religious doctrine (e.g., the Catholic Church’s unnatural doctrine of casting sex and homosexuality as sinful) can be, not only in terms of Philomena’s 50 years of traumatic internal conflict and loss (on top of her original traumatic loss of her son) – and the concurrent lack of biological mother and son never being able to reunite  due to yet another heinous act by the nuns, lying to Anthony/Michael so as to keep him from reuniting with Philomena – but also in terms of the disturbing devolution of people, in this case the nuns and their conditioned belief that “sin” equates to dehumanization and thus giving them license to treat perceived “sinners” in such a monstrous way.

In this way too, the film becomes yet another allegorical testament to the long history of abuses by both the Catholic Church, an ideological institution that has both been a bastion of not only intolerance and abusive austerity but also heinous acts of physical and sexual violation.

A few other moments and elements that I just love in this film:

Philomena’s Psychological “Prison”

I love that shot of present day Philomena inside the nunnery gate (she has re-traced her steps from 50 years ago, when she originally lost Anthony), Frears shooting her behind the “bars” of the gate suggesting that she is still in her psychological trauma-prison.

Philomena=Christ and Mary

Frears gives us numerous shots of Philomena set against Christian icons, suggesting I think that she embodies the true nature of Christ, her compassion, her unconditional love and acceptance of Others, her kindness and tenderness, and, most importantly, her capacity to forgive what was done to her all speaking to the true values of Christ’s message. My favorite image is in one of the opening scenes, Philomena sitting alone in a church space, conspicuously positioned opposite the virgin Mary and baby Jesus (Philomena bathed in a warm golden glow) strikingly suggesting both her imbued spirituality (mirroring Jesus) and her similarities to Mary, both women having children out of wedlock!

Freeing One’s Self

I also love that long shot of the statue of Abraham Lincoln (Philomena and Martin are visiting the Lincoln Memorial) looking down on Martin and Philomena, the signifier of “slavery” and “freedom” really accentuated in this moment, appropriate for Philomena and Martin’s journey, their attempt to not only “free” Philomena from her psychological oppression but other women like her who have suffered the same fate, and Martin himself, a man caught in his own ivory tower arrogance and elitism (influenced by Philomena, he becomes a better man in the course of their time together) another kind of dehumanized state of being.

Sexuality on the Wall

In another striking juxtaposition, Frears has Martin looking at photos of nuns on a wall, but then he jarringly tilts the camera down to reveal a photo of Jane Russell, the famous actress initially marketed for her sex appeal. On the one hand, the photo is just simply an ostensible marker of the past history of nuns selling babies to Americans (Jane Russell apparently purchased/adopted a baby from the nuns) but I think the deeper implications suggests something else here, e.g., another sign of the nuns’ bankrupt morality, the photo suggesting their own compromised nature, that despite this Jane Russell photo actually being evidence of their crimes against humanity (and that Jane Russell represents the kind of carnal sexuality they profess to see as sinful), because of her star power, they nonetheless keep her image on their wall!

Discovering Anthony

Finally, I love the way that Frears breaks from the linear, diegetic narrative to give us inserts of home movie moments that document Anthony/Michael’s arrival in America and his childhood and adult life moments, which personalizes his own journey from arriving in America to growing up and becoming a man, punctuating the life span that Philomena never got to be a part of, the home movie context adding a nostalgic intimacy to Anthony/Michael, making him more than just some endpoint abstraction, though, interestingly, these home movies suggest a happy childhood but Mary’s (his fellow adopted sister) testimony suggests that their lives were not happy ones (and she is physically coded as a deeply unhappy woman), which, in turn, glaringly punctuates even more the monstrousness of this act as both Mary and Anthony would have certainly been better off with their natural biological mothers, despite not having the privilege and wealth that they got from their adopted parents, a fact punctuated by Michael’s dying wish to “go home,” his end-of-life yearning to have the life he has imagined to be better than his actual lived life, a final marker of just how unhappy he had been with his adopted (sold) fate.