Even in death, Sinéad O’Connor cannot escape the abuse and gaslighting she faced in life over her anti–Catholic Church protests (see doc Nothing Compares for more on that). A certain American Catholic organization that I shall not dignify by naming last week lambasted the singer and activist as not a “‘truth-teller’” but “a troubled soul who was badly educated.” This is, of course, utter bullshit. O’Connor had firsthand experience of one of the institutional horrors of the Catholic Church in Ireland: she was sent to one of the nightmare Magdalene laundries as a teenager because she was a wild kid.
One true-life story of these prisons — yes, they were prisons, and the last of them only closed in the 1990s — can be found in 2013’s Philomena. Judi Dench plays an Irish woman forced to give up the son she gave birth to out of wedlock in a convent-prison; now elderly, she has been trying to find her son all her life, and finds new help in Steve Coogan’s journalist.
Director Stephen Frears avoids phony sentiment, but the bald facts of Philomena’s story are so awful that no embellishment is needed for them to be deeply affecting. I was in tears of rage and horror through much of the film. Yet the film is remarkably funny, too. This could be the first cry-until-you-laugh dramedy I’ve ever seen. (Read my 2013 review.)
US: stream on Prime; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on Disney+; rent on BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See Philomena at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
