Is artistic integrity still possible?

PHILOMENA

We went to see the film of that name yesterday. If you've been thinking about doing the same then I can strongly recommend it. It's beautifully acted (could La Grand Judy do otherwise?), often very funny and deals with a moving subject without ever being mawkish. Of course it has it's manipulative moments, but any dramatic tale which has to be told in little more than an hour and a half requires some licence to tinker with the audience's emotions.  If you can't handle that then you probably aren't much of a movie goer.

Spoiler alert. If you haven't yet seen the film and don't want to know what happens until you do then stop reading now because I'll be giving away most of the major elements of the plot, then having a look at how this dramatisation appears to relate to the real world Philomena.  Because this is a story very much based upon real life events.

The film begins with two strands which are quickly knitted together. The eponymous central character grows up in small town nineteen fifties Ireland, then even more socially backward than Britain and subject to the mores and diktats of the Catholic church.  Largely ignorant of the facts of life, she has a brief sexual relationship which leaves her pregnant (but also extremely happy memories of the sex itself and the great enjoyment it gave her).  With her mother already dead it is left to her father to decide what fate awaits her.  Disgusted at the actions of his daughter he hands her over to the 'care' of a convent which will punish her for the sin of becoming pregnant out of wedlock.

Philomena has a son, Anthony, who she is then allowed to see for no more than one hour each day. For the rest of the time she is, in common with the other inmates, used as slave labour in the convent laundries and subject to a strict and punitive regime from which no escape is permitted. This was the subject of the 2002 film The Magdalene Sisters which first brought to the attention of a wide audience the barbaric nature of the treatment meted out to the girls unfortunate enough to be subjected to this brutal stricture.

Anthony, and the daughter of Philomena's best friend, are taken away for adoption by a wealthy couple. No warning is given, no explanation or details provided.  All this is seen in flashback through the mind of Dench's elderly Irish woman, now living in London.  Having kept the secret to herself for decades, she breaks her silence on Anthony's fiftieth birthday, finally confiding the story to her daughter.

The second strand follows Martin Sixsmith, once a well known BBC foreign correspondent, who has been controversially sacked from his post as a spin doctor in the Labour government (if you Google on Sixsmith Byers you can get details of the story). At a loss as to where his life is going he is approached by Philomena's daughter asking if he'd be prepared to help her mother track down her missing son and write their story. Initially disparaging the notion of involvement in a 'human interest' tale (which he construes as overly sentimental and trivial), he changes his mind, perhaps seeking something which will help change his own life.

And so the unlikely pair come together.  He is Oxford educated, world weary, cynical, often supercilious. She somewhat simple minded, verbose, apparently innocent, staunhly Catholic. The scene is set for a classic odd couple movie and that, in part, is what we get. Together they visit the convent in which Philomena was incarcerated and come up against a wall of silence. Sixsmith does some digging and finds out that the children had been taken to the USA, sold for adoption to an American family, yet another charming aspect of the nuns' 'humane' treatment of their charges.

The pair then travel over to the States, a chance to show Philomena's near childish delight in things that an experienced traveller like Sixsmith takes for granted. At times her naivety grates upon him and then she will tell him off for failing to treat people as his equals. They become closer when the journalist finds out that Anthony, known in his new life as Michael, had died six years previously.  But he also discovers he had been a success in career terms, as a senior member of the legal teams within the Reagan and Bush presidencies. (At which point I did find myself thinking that maybe it was as well he had died - imagine having to meet a Republican relative.... Whereas Philomena would be far less political, less mean spirited and far, far more forgiving.  I told myself off.)

They meet Michael's sister (the little girl who had been taken away with him) and his ex partner, Peter. To the journalist's surprise Philomena takes the news of her son's sexual orientation in her stride and her calm is often more effective than his anger in getting the information they seek.  Peter reveals that Michael/Anthony is buried back in Ireland, in the grounds of the convent, and they'd travelled there trying to find information about his real mother. Although Philomena had been contacting them frequently, asking for details which help her trace her son, the nuns said nothing to either son or mother about each other's efforts and he died (of AIDS) without ever learning who she was.

Sixsmith and Philomena return to the convent and confront the nuns, in particular one who is frail and elderly, but was once amongst the most brutal instruments of the oppressive system. The journalist's heart felt anger achieves little, but the mother's forgiveness proves the more effective in emphasising who occupies the position of moral superiority in the engagement. The film ends with the couple driving away from the institution, Philomena once again relating the tale of the book she has just finished reading and how she is surprised at the most obvious plot twists.

Back home I watched a couple of video interviews on the subject. In the first the real Martin Sixsmith and Philomena Lee were asked their opinions of the film. Dramatic licence had been used to give the characters greater contrast, for the real Irish woman is nowhere near as simple as portrayed on screen, nor is the journalist quite as off hand or emotional. But both accepted that what had been done to their personas worked in cinematic terms and that the film managed to be entertaining whilst remaining true to the most important elements of their story. In the film it appears that both learned important life lessons from the other, the journalist the greater beneficiary. Both thought that, while exaggerated, there was an underlying truth to this.  Even if it turns out that, in reality, Sixsmith made the US journey on his own, keeping in touch with the subject of his story by telephone.

So this was no Hollywoodisation of the tale. That would have seen the son still being alive, a reconnection that would have been falsely moving and a faked heart warming ending. The second video emphasised the importance attached to staying true to the spirit of the real events. This time Sixsmith was paired with Steve Coogan, who co-wrote the screenplay and starred as the journalist. Coogan had been inspired by the book which Sixsmith had written on the back of the investigation and wanted to tell the tale in the more immediate format. For all the liberties he took with the real characters and events it was pleasing to see Sixsmith nod his approval that the moral heart of the story remained untouched and that this version will help raise further awareness of the Magdalene story. (And, I suspect, happy to think that the film may stimulate a revival in the sales of his own book. We'd certainly like to read it now.)

'Artisitic integrity' is a much abused and maligned phrase. As is, even more so, 'journalistic integrity'. In the face of Hollywood fabrications, and post Leveson, both have a mythical quality. This film won't stem the tide by itself, but it does show that both these phrases can still hold true in the right hands.  It tells of a journalist who does the right thing for, mostly, the right reasons and gives the world a story that it needed to hear.  And we have a film that sets out to be entertaining whilst still purveying the essential truth about a part of very recent history that the Catholic church, and Irish state, would like people to forget.

It does that, combining some laugh out loud moments with passages of genuinely touching emotion.  We could do with a lot more films like that.