Philomena

Philomena is a story that really hits me hard. It's a (dramatically changed) true story, chronicling a journalist and his protagonist, Philomena, as they travel across the United States looking for her son, given up for adoption as an infant. As an adopted child myself, it left me wondering with all hope if my mother would ever come find me. Although my situation is completely different. But that's beside the point. The point is, I expected this movie to have quite an emotional effect on me. A mother hunting down the child she was forced to give up? Get me the kleenex, this is gonna be another movie like 50/50.

Or not...

The pieces were all there for this story to work. It was an incredibly tragic story, set up with morally questionable religious tactics, resulting in an amazing story of one mans life and one womans forgiveness. But I don't know. A few scenes had me feeling angry or hopeful. But the pacing of the film left me feeling a bit let down by the events happing. The biggest moments felt unimportant, brushed over, forgotten. By the next scene, moments that should have been devastating or uplifting were somewhat forgotten. The moments we love the characters are left behind for the next scene showing they really haven't changed at all.

It's a beautiful story, one filled with awesome revelations about humanity, about love, about devotion and about failure. It also shows brilliant criticism of past Roman Catholic practices, and horrendous injustice supported by such an influential group at one time (granted, it's no longer done). But too many scenes are so obviously fabricated, so poorly structured, that it's obvious what scenes really happened and which were written in for the movie. And some of which are pretty insulting. It turns out one of the incredibly climactic scenes that very much criticized the Catholic Church never happened. It wouldn't bother me so much except for the fact that so much of the film worked in its criticism that I couldn't get over how poor the scene was.

Acting in the film was, to me, hit or miss. Some of it worked, and REALLY worked. But other moments, moments that actors are being praised for, I can't help but think were a bit cartoony. Not unlike A Dangerous Method, where Keira Knightley was praised for her acting but I couldn't help but think it was cartoony, like watching a bad horror performance. There were similar feelings towards this film, granted they weren't as dramatic.

Philomena is worth a watch. It's an amazing story and one I think everyone should know. But sadly, the film is not nearly as successful as I was hoping for. As an adopted child, I have to say it did nothing to make me feel. And I'm pretty sure it's safe to say there aren't many other people that could connect with this movie in the same way, except of course for mothers.

Rank - 2.5/5