I think I'll try to watch it. Even if it'll be painful, it's important to support movies when they shed light on history like this.

I haven't, but from what I've heard it deals with the long-standing abuse in that convent.

First thing I thought of when I read this OP

Julie

Hope it comes back to a local theatre...we have such crappy movies at our cineplexes. Philomena has been relegated to a kind of art movie theatre where there is access to daytime showings only on the weekend. The audience I sat with yesterday was uniformly older, both men and women. So many of us left the theatre quietly shaken...we all lived through this era, though not in the U.K. It was incredibly moving to this crowd...

a pretty decent article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_asylum

as opposed to Philip Cooledge ?

He is so good...

I'm going to try to find it...

Both movies are hard to take but very revealing.

The film really upset him and his girlfriend too.

like The Deer Hunter. Saw it once. Never again.

when people try to dismiss it, or say that their suffering is less than that of other groups.

One of the best TV comedies of all time is his 'I'm Alan Partridge'. Seek it out and enjoy. He's one of my long time favorites.

So many American actors could learn LOTS from those two!

Saxondale,another good Coogan series.

It was creepy and awful. She was lucky to have an uncle who was a well known physician at the Catholic hospital in Hartford, so when she went into a difficult labor, they took her to the hospital. Everything was secret. My friend and I lost touch about 20 years ago, but at that time she had had no luck in finding her daughter.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but I will, and if it's what I think it is, I will be sure my 25 year old daughter and her friends see it too. They must see and understand where the religious right wants to take us. We've been there before.

'80s. She told me that in her private practice she saw lots of women who suffered greatly from having to have their babies and then give them up. Every year at their birthdays these women grieved terribly way after Roe.

She tells the story and then sings her song.. the song itself starts at about 2:30

of restitution.

laundries" by bill donohue (remember him??)

nowhere does he even mention the mass grave found in 1993, just to mention one point.


http://www.catholicleague.org/myths-of-the-magdalene-laundries/

on the grounds of the convent and finds a cemetary of the young women, one as young as 14, and ones where both the woman and the baby died. It was untended and overgrown. He had to clear weeds away to read the inscriptions on the markers. It was pretty devastating...

No point in using obscene language to describe him, because he is an obscenity.

worry for my garden with all that toxicity.

These are stories we rarely hear because the mothers don't talk about them. They were shamed, belittled, and humiliated in ways that affect them the rest of their lives. Added to the humiliation is the intense pain of losing one's child, to never know what happened to him/her. The mothers were not entitled to express their loss and grief, because of their "sins", however.

We all know many women who lived this nightmare, but it is a rare woman who will discuss it. The system that stole babies from their mothers did a really good job of silencing them. I've been involved in adoption groups and I don't think there is a story I haven't heard. There was one woman who was told her baby had died. She never had any other children. The baby girl who DIDN'T die found her 25 years later.

Personally I think they should be committed to psychiatric care, but how do you do that with millions?

People who want to create a society that is the way they visualize it - Donna Reed or the Cleavers. No single mothers in public, they are just to be used as breeders for those who are more worthy, and then cast aside when they've served their purpose.

instinctively. I remember, back then, thinking something along the lines of, "They're against abortion because the fetus might be a boy!"

but it does ring true.

For a long time, I really thought I understood people's opposition to abortion, but as these 'pro-lifers' gained more and more ground, I realized it was more anti-women than it was pro-life. Suppress and humiliate them wherever possible.

It's the proverbial give them an inch, they take a mile.

You want some of the cred you are seeking.

CONDEMN the order that did this! Scatter the order to other orders, but forbid this order from ever forming again!

acting all sorrowful for what Philomena went thru...

He really should. Especially if he wants the anti-woman stuff to be considered "less of a priority" as he's suggested.

It was so terribly sad and horrific. I did see the movie also.

In reality, one girl was sent there only because she was 'too pretty' and might invite male attention. A number were not pregnant but had "sinned." The last Magdalene home was closed only in the 1990s. It was 20th century slavery.

I can read the book though.

And since I love Dench and love to see her work, I was persuaded to go. If I had known how hard that scene was to take, I probably wouldn't have. From now on, I am going to read a few more reviews before I make my decision.

very interesting thread knowing I'll never be able to watch this movie.