Every person is a Moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
-Mark Twain.
It was a question designed more to wound than to
inquire … “Why don’t you go to church more often?” she asked me, giving me a
daring look. “Why don’t you pray at night or wear a cross?”
My mind was blurred. “Should I really go to church and
learn every prayer to call myself a Christian?” I thought but hesitated to answer, murmuring
something unclear like I always do under pressure.
She was grinning with a deep self-satisfaction at seeing
my puzzled and slightly flustered facial expression. At that moment I felt lost
and beaten. Yet, although I had lost the verbal skirmish something inside me
was whispering the truth. That whisper grew stronger over time but remained silently
sleeping inside my mind until the night I saw “Philomena”.
“Philomena” is not only a profoundly touching story of
a mother who embarks on a 50 year long search for her son. It is a
heartbreaking story of a forced separation. And in many scenes we perceive and stand
in awe at the power of the indestructible love that was once an umbilical cord.
No matter how far her son is, Philomena remains strongly attached to him by the
umbilical spirit which remains long after the physical cord has been snipped. Even after Antony’s birth, once the cord was
cut and they were physically separated, there always was an invisible force
that brought them together in their thoughts and prayers. And what may seem the
main theme of the film – an almost inexplicably strong telepathic connection
between mother and child and the
constant never-ending search for each other – should be viewed as a secondary
theme.
Yet something that remains hidden between the lines
and in my opinion constitutes the main message of the film.
Philomena is a young pretty girl in 1950s Ireland who
falls in love and gets pregnant. Her father - ashamed of her sins and the
social judgments they will engender - leaves the daughter at a convent with nuns.
Her life at the convent is hard especially considering her pregnancy. There is
no doctor present when she is giving birth to her child – given the baby’s
podalic position this is a fearful absence.. Philomena is often humiliated and
constantly reminded of having committed a deadly sin. The waves of condemnation continue to engulf her
even at the moment of birth, which is almost a moment of death given the risk
to the baby’s life.
Having experienced a cruel separation from her son and
learned of his adoption, Philomena leaves the convent and starts a new life hiding her secret from everyone who knew
her. Until one day she cannot handle the pain anymore and reveals the hard
truth to her daughter and a BBC journalist Martin.
Being the opposite of her, Martin represents the
majority of us. He is the one who insists on unveiling the truth about the
adoption of Antony and he is the one who is determined to find him, separating
“the good” from “the bad”.
Thanks to Martin we find out the ugly truth about the
convent policy and the adoption business they operated for many years. We can
at last see the dark side of the Church’s operation. We see the religious order
that had no scruples or regrets about separating children from their mothers
and being paid a thousand pounds for each baby. We see the organization that
never gave a penny to the desperate mothers and hid all the information on the
adoption. We see the nuns who left pregnant women “in the hands of God” and in
many cases let them and their children die while giving birth. In short we see the Church that hides its own
sinful practices behind the sins of suffering mothers, mothers who will never
find peace or pardon.
What we see happen to Philomena is a unique story, but
not because the pain caused to her was unique. She was not the only mother who
was cruelly separated from her child. What makes her story unique is her
ability to stay Christian even in a world where the “Holy Mother Church” is far
from perfect, and even further from giving good example as a “Holy Mother”.
Philomena is so affected by the idea of being a
sinner, of being inferior to other people that when her son is taken away from
her and adopted without her permission, she still bears no anger towards the
nuns. She manages her anger so well that sometimes it seems unfair not to have
it. And in many scenes we see Martin express the hate, anger and suffering
which are really hers. But in the end, while Martin remains a slave of all the
negativity he feels towards the Church and the world, Philomena liberates
herself by forgiving everyone who ever brought her any suffering.
Her ability to forgive the sins of others and her
ability to see only the good in everyone she meets outweighs the persistent
guilt of her “dreadful sin”. The film brilliantly exposes the irony of a Christianity
obsessed with punishment for sins while leaving aside the most important rule
Jesus ever taught us: the power of forgiveness and giving another chance to
start again ....
As I watched the film, as it moved me internally, a
question kept echoing round my mind. The question asked with such pharisaical
satisfaction by the woman on the street.
Does it really take to wear a cross or recite
formulaic prayers to be a Christian? Is it enough to cross the confines of a church
to be reunited with the divine spark within us? Can one still be Christian and
not belong to any religious confession? What is the
relationship between religious affiliation and belief in God?
While most of the people sitting next to me in the cinema discussed the power
of the mother’s love (an obvious message) and some even said they were falling
asleep (!), I was astonished to hear none of them speak of Philomena’s
outstanding humanity. Her humanity moved me, it touched deep layers of my
consciousness, it deserved my gratitude
which I am expressing here. I am grateful to her and all the other people whose
beauty may never be revealed to the majority. But, in the end, what does the
majority know about beauty, if they condemned Jesus?
That is a question I would like to ask the woman who
stopped me in the street.
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