Review of Philomena (2013) by Asia J — 04 Aug 2014

I saw the movie and read the book, and recommend both. Let us start off with the movie.

So, I haven't heard of the book until I saw the movie. I never even knew there was a convent in Roscrea (one of the major places in the movie), even though I live a 30 minute car drive from it. And that might be one of the small details of why I love the movie so much - not only is it based (but not filmed) in Ireland, but also in places that I've been to (Roscrea, Birr.). But that's just a small detail that's yet another plus from me.

The movie is a masterpiece. It's sad, like it should, but adds quite a lot of funny moments, making it a flick for the whole family. Not only is it a great movie, the cast is fantastic too - with Judi Dench as Philomena and Steve Coogan as Martin Sixmith - the former BBC reporter that helped Philomena on her search and is the author of the book.

The book, however, is a totally different story, and is definitely suitable for older readers. While the movie was all about Phil's and Martin's journey for her son Anthony (or Michael, as named by his adoptive parents), the book barely had that. The first of the 3 parts of the book (it's divided into 25 chapters and 3 parts) is all about Philomena and her life in the convent, starting off with her giving birth to Anthony (like the movie). However, while in the movie we had maybe 10-15 minutes of Philomena's early life, in the book it gets nearly 100 pages (the book has about 420 in total).

Then the rest of the book is dedicated to Anthony's new life in America - how he grew up, all about his family problems, all about his addictions, all about his work, etc. The book also included a LOT talk about the governments and laws of both Ireland and America. Ireland, to explain how come the church got away with selling Irish babies to the US and the American because Michael ended up having an important role in it.

Many things were also simply glanced over in the movie, even though they were very important in the movie. And I know, the movie and the book are completely different, but still! For example, at the end of the movie we find out that Michael was gay. However, in the book we're told it played a huge part in his life, especially at work.

Another example are the characters that were important in the book, but either (one again) glanced over in the movie, or not shown in it at all. For example, Susan Kavanagh was a good friend of Mike's. granted she only appeared in the 3rd part of the book, but was an important person to Michael and helped him through a lot. In the movie, it's like she's more of a cameo. All she did in the movie was tell Philomena a bit about Mike's job, boyfriend and the fact that she often pretended to be with him as being gay wasn't acceptable in Mike's political party.

Also, throughout Michael's life, there were many men he had 'romances' in - his love life really did take up a lot in the book. In the movie, none of them (except for Pete - his last love) were ever mentioned. Hell, in the book one of them died a painful death and still we never hear of it in the movie.

There are also things not mentioned in neither the book or the movie, and unless you watched interviews with the real-life Phil and Martin, you'd never know them. For example, in the interviews Phil and her daughter Jane (or so I think) tell us that it was actually Jane that did a lot of the search. In fact, she herself searched for 2 years (again, I'm not sure if it was exactly 2 years, but somewhere around that) before she got Sixmith on it! Granted, she is mentioned at the beginning of both the book and the movie, but very briefly.

Also, while both Phil and Martin say they're proud of the movie and love it, they admit there's one little thing that was a bit over exaggerated. What was that?

The humor.

Yes, as I said already, the movie was quite funny, thanks to how the two main characters reacted to certain situations, and their conversations in general were funny. Martin and Phil though, say that there was a bit too much of that and that the conversations shown in the movie (primarily about religion, as Phil is a strong Catholic and Martin is an Atheist) were a bit far-fetched.

Personally, I love the joke that Martin is planning to write a book on Russian history, as he was a correspondent for BBC in Moscow, Washington, Brussels and Warsaw, and everyone clearly thinks that it's a.... lets just say they don't consider it a great idea. In real life, however, Sixmith is the author of several novels and non-fiction books - involving two about Russia.

All in all - both the movie and book are fantastic. They show the same story, but in two completely two different lights. In my opinion, if you want to know everything about the story, you should read the book, watch the movie and watch some interviews. The movie also sends an important message - that when church and law get together, not much good can come out of it. As we find out at the end of the book - many more mothers are searching for their babies that were sent over the sea.

But hey - nothing's perfect, right? True, but I can't really think of a few things wrong with either book or movie. Well, one thing I don't get in the book is - when did Michael decide he wants to work for the government? We were told that for much of his childhood he wanted to be priest, as he was a very religious person (might have something to do with the fact his adoptive mothers's brother was a bishop). Then, one evening when he was 16 or 17, he was having a discussion with his adoptive father about the situation with the American politics, and Michael just then revealed to us that he wants to take this up as a job. No build up, no real hints at it.

Except for that - I think that the movie and book are worth checking out, and I'd recommend it to anyone above the age of about 12. In the movie due to some cussing and quite a complicated plot (for a young person) and in the book for the amount of political talk, cussing and a lot of talks about homosexuality.