Philom­e­na

Hav­ing ignobly lost his job as a polit­i­cal pun­dit for the BBC, Mar­tin Six­smith embarked on an ad-hoc career in what he calls ​“human inter­est” jour­nal­ism. This bland umbrel­la term com­pris­es of down-to-earth tales of hope and tragedy which remain unsul­lied by the whirring cogs of White­hall and bureau­crat­ic gamesmanship.

In Stephen Frears’ Philom­e­na, Six­smith (Steve Coogan, offer­ing one of his most del­i­cate and refined per­for­mances to date) goes in search of this clam­my print man­na in an attempt to dis­tance him­self from his back­bit­ing for­mer occu­pa­tion. By sheer coin­ci­dence, in between deflect­ing odi­ous barbs at a stuffy white wine soirée, a wait­ress over­hears of his new endeav­our and tells him of her saint­ly moth­er, Philom­e­na (Judi Dench), an elder­ly Irish nurse whose son was put up for adop­tion against her will when she was, dur­ing her teens, detained in a con­vent run by hate­ful nuns.

This is Frears’ strongest film in quite some time, the sim­plic­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al giv­ing rise to a series of ever-more-com­plex and sub­tly artic­u­lat­ed spir­i­tu­al quan­daries. The mate­r­i­al is nev­er ren­dered as a sim­ple case of the­ism (Philom­e­na) ver­sus athe­ism (Six­smith), and instead has both char­ac­ters being made aware of the intel­lec­tu­al fal­li­bil­i­ty of their cho­sen creed.

The open­ing, alas, is some­what shaky, par­tic­u­lar­ly in rela­tion to Philomena’s char­ac­ter and the fact that Dench opts to play her as an updat­ed ver­sion of Father Ted’s Mrs Doyle. Her grat­ing naivety and kooky parochial sense of humour are ini­tial­ly framed as oppor­tu­ni­ties for light mock­ery, such as when she announces that her favourite restau­rant is a Har­vester and is lat­er whipped into a wide-eyed tizzy at the fact that Big Momma’s House is screen­ing on tele­vi­sion. Cue bemused, secret­ly dis­gust­ed reac­tion shots from Coogan.

Yet even though the film appears to ini­tial­ly pitch itself as a mis-matched, inter-gen­er­a­tional bud­dy com­e­dy road movie which pokes fun at the obvi­ous class and cul­tur­al chasms that exist between its two pro­tag­o­nists, it even­tu­al­ly evolves into some­thing far more sophis­ti­cat­ed. Frears nev­er allows the rela­tion­ship between Six­smith and Philom­e­na to prop­er­ly set­tle, and duly steers clear of icky sen­ti­men­tal­ism and Oscar clip eupho­ria at moments where it could’ve been very easy to veer down that dark­ened alley.

With a script co-writ­ten by Coogan him­self, it’s easy to see where Sixsmith’s ball-bust­ing bitch news­pa­per edi­tor comes from, and the over­all cred­i­bil­i­ty of the sto­ry is ham­pered due to her utter­ly unten­able and moral­ly repug­nant demands (Six­smith, though, always at least attempts to weasel out his grim edi­to­r­i­al predica­ment with­out play­ing Philom­e­na for a sap, which is appar­ent­ly par for the course in the world of broad­sheet jour­nal­ism). The char­ac­ter comes across as a noth­ing more than a weak car­i­ca­ture, so Sixsmith’s moti­va­tions too become unclear.

The lev­el at which the film oper­ates best is as a cogent and mov­ing dis­cus­sion of the con­so­la­tions of reli­gion. Six­smith proud­ly announces him­self as a non-believ­er and scoffs haugh­ti­ly at Philomena’s devout reli­gios­i­ty as quaint mum­bo-jum­bo. And though the film appears to be tak­ing Sixsmith’s side (the bygone activ­i­ties of the Catholic church are giv­en a par­tic­u­lar­ly rough ride), it even­tu­al­ly switch­es back to sug­gest that reli­gion doesn’t strict­ly involve believ­ing in a divine deity, but is mere­ly the exis­tence of human compassion.

The superb final shot (props to ace DoP Rob­bie Ryan) sees the pair dri­ving off into a gor­geous snow-dap­pled vista, a land­scape which itself looks like it might have been touched by the hand of God.