Philomena: Plain, Yet Heavy

Philomena: Plain, Yet Heavy

1. An Ingredient at Its Best

The real Philomena Lee and Judi Dench, who plays her in the film

Philomena's Miracle (original title: Philomena) is based on a true story. The source material is The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, written in 2009 by former BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith. As I've noted before, true stories carry a kind of aura that fiction and invented narratives simply cannot replicate — like an ingredient that achieves the finest texture with minimal preparation, as opposed to a five-star dish loaded with seasoning.

I don't personally like the word "miracle," but sometimes the infinite combinations that emerge from six billion lives produce events beyond imagination. Philomena's story is simultaneously a "miracle" and yet utterly "universal" — because it speaks to the stories of the approximately 10,000 Irish adoptees of that era.

Philomena met her son Michael once a week.

2. The Journalist

The Martin depicted in the film gives full, unadorned expression to the dilemma of a journalist covering what is called a "sad story." Of course, comparing a veteran journalist doing an in-depth story like Martin — after decades of experience — to a junior reporter without much seniority would be a stretch. But I couldn't help finding myself identifying with Martin as I watched. (I have some growing up to do.)

One of the most challenging assignments has always been covering a funeral. The subject of the reporting is typically deceased, and those around them are in the midst of processing their grief — which makes you feel like a foreign body the moment you step into a funeral home. It's a time when you find yourself wrestling with your duties as a human being alongside your responsibilities as a journalist — balancing respect for the deceased, the emotional state of the bereaved family, and the obligation to report.

Some time ago I covered the case of Hwang Seung-won, a student at the University of Seoul who died while inspecting refrigeration equipment at an E-Mart in Ilsan. As soon as I got the news, I went to the scene and then to the funeral home. I was very much a rookie journalist at the time, and covering a funeral home felt impossibly difficult. Should I make a condolence contribution? How do I approach the family? I couldn't figure out how to proceed. So I simply became a mourner — I paid my respects, and then stayed, sitting in a corner of the hospital. My editor's calls came in relentlessly, but I ignored them.

Perhaps it was coincidence — or perhaps not. The deceased's mother came out for a rest and ended up sitting next to me. I found myself interviewing her, and her younger sister. Or rather, we just talked. Poverty, diligence, family. I couldn't even take notes — I sat and listened for a long time and wept. (The story that later ran in Hankyoreh was, I think, an excellent piece on the underlying problems of the case.) With experience comes technique for interviewing bereaved families — but no amount of technique makes a funeral home familiar. That much remains constant.

In the film, early on, Martin has to inform Philomena of her son's death as they arrive together in America. In my mind I thought: if I were the journalist, I would close my laptop and postpone delivering the news — but Martin, without saying a word, simply turns the laptop toward her and lets her see. Because it is something that has to be told, however painful.

I don't know what the reality was like, but Martin doesn't hold Philomena back when she says she wants to return to England — even though he's traveled all this way and set the whole thing in motion. What Philomena needs is comfort and time to heal her wounds. He doesn't do what a journalist under deadline pressure would: dig into a wound. Delivering the facts with composure, not forcing the display of pain under the banner of journalism — I thought Martin was "not a bad" journalist.

3. Turning Away

Another memorable scene: the moment Philomena goes to meet her son Michael's partner. Martin, with all his veteran's confidence, believes he knows how to handle a "source" who refuses to cooperate. (Of course, he gets thrown out — naturally.) It's a common experience in the field. Just because you want to meet someone and hear their story doesn't mean you can. Sometimes you stake out their home through the night, plead, even resort to something close to pressure. Regardless — Martin cannot open the door that Philomena ultimately can. Because she is the mother.

From there, the story unfolds more or less as one might expect. Michael had never stopped thinking about his home country of Ireland. He had even traveled to the Irish convent searching for his mother. The rough video footage playing out on screen — predictable yet emotionally true — shows that the power of a genuine story reaches you even when you can see it coming.

4. Gay and Republican

The scene where the film pivots from a true story into a full-blown narrative is when it's revealed that Philomena's son Michael was a legal counsel for President George H.W. Bush and also served under the Reagan administration. His editor, naturally, calls it "perfect for the weekend edition." The story has everything. Even more striking: Michael is gay. Good lord — a gay advisor working inside the Republican Party.

If this were invented, I'd call it a conspicuously arranged plot device. But because it's real, it becomes "good lord." America was only just beginning, even recently, to develop a more open atmosphere around LGBT issues. For Michael, in the 1980s, in the Republican Party — of course he would have had to invent a fake girlfriend and live by hiding who he was.

What's striking is that when Philomena hears that her son was gay, she shows no shock or distress whatsoever. "I always thought he might be — he was a sensitive boy from a young age," she says. In these words, you feel in a visceral way the bond between mother and child formed from birth. Seeing her calmly ask whether Michael died of HIV, her composure in the face of whatever choice her son had made — I was moved, however vaguely, by what a mother is: a presence that encompasses and accepts.

5. Religion

Sometimes "conviction" becomes "dogma" — turning a person into a racehorse with blinders on, unable to see what surrounds them. The ornate mask of "God's providence" conceals an ugly face beneath, and the holes in that mask prevent one from seeing the world outside.

As an atheist who wishes God existed, I find it difficult to comprehend the logic of the Roscrea nuns. This may be the film's exaggeration — but the "system" represented by the convent subordinates human beings under the authority of justice. The logic runs: "You sinned, therefore you deserve punishment." (Where did the "mercy" and "grace" go, for heaven's sake?)

In the film, Philomena often says: "If I had raised him myself, he probably wouldn't have grown up as wonderfully as he did." She means that being adopted spared Michael from hardship and allowed him to thrive. Watching the nuns' high-handed lies beside Philomena's response, I kept thinking of Korea. Korea too sent many children abroad for adoption after the Korean War, during difficult times. In that process, as in the film, money changed hands, and institutional abuse was common.

Of course, somewhere in a parent's heart there is the wish that if life will be hard, perhaps a child is better off in a wealthier home with comfort and ease. In that sense, Philomena's choice — to forgive the nuns yet still request that the story be reported — was a wise one. While following the principle of "forgiveness," unlike the nuns, she could call attention to the injustice, create public interest, and spark change.

In the film, Philomena is an ordinary grandmother who enjoys romance novels and marvels at her first trip abroad. But the reason her story can be called a "miracle" is that it created a wave of response. Ireland remained under strict Catholic dominance — divorce was illegal until 1995. The forced labor facility depicted in the film only closed in 1996. Yet that same Ireland changed so profoundly that it legalized same-sex marriage through a national referendum in May of that year.

Former Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny issued an official apology for illegal adoptions in 2013. Even today, a program called the "Philomena Project" works to reunite children born to unmarried mothers with their families.