It is unfair of me to even mention these two movies names together in one title, considering they are worlds apart in every possible way. I saw both the movies last week and could not have loved one or hated the other more!
Philomena is a story of a mother whose child was taken away from her through a forced adoption, an account she kept hidden for 50 years. The movie tries and succeeds marvelously at depicting the grief and longing of a mother who has been separated from her child. Even though I would highly recommend it to all adult moviegoers, I know it will touch a chord with mothers especially. You see, when we mothers birth our children, we also give birth to a special kind of fear – the fear of being separated from your child or seeing him/her come to harm. This dread-inducing feeling is unlike anything you would have ever felt before having children.
When my older one was close to 2.5 years old, he got lost at the park for about half an hour. I had never known that kind of extreme terror and agony that gripped my heart for those 25-30 minutes. Time had slowed to a surreal crawl, I have vivid memories of every minute that we were looking for him. That was almost three years ago, but my heart beats faster every time I think about it. I think both of us suffered mild PTSD after that incident, it took me longer to get over it compared to my boy.
Even though I enjoy sci-fi, thriller and superhero movies, once in a while I like to indulge in tender and heart-warming realistic films which touch me deep down and stay with me for a long time. ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ was one such movie I saw recently and now Philomena.
And now Transformers “Age of Extinction” – first thing I noticed about the movie was how unfitting the title was – no one and nothing is at the brink of extinction. Oh wait, there is that dinosaurs getting extinct scene caused by a giant explosion by some alien transformers in the beginning. There is some controversy on whether the movie passed the Bechdel Test, it’s all down to technicalities. I, however think it failed miserably. I not sure what bothered me the most – Mark Walburg as an unconvincing buffy inventor, the 17 year old ‘underage’ daughters perfectly colored moisture-rich lips in every scene, the hope-my-accent-distracts-you-enough-not-to-notice-my-bad-performance Irish boyfriend, the every Asian must know martial arts stereotype, the Samurai Autobot, the gleeful look on the faces of our protagonists while using firearms.. I think the list is endless. The worst line of the movie was the only one that was actually remotely funny – “My face is my warrant”! Of course I didn’t expect a movie about giant robots to be cohesive and have much of a storyline, but this was three hours of pure torture.
The Higgledy Piggledy Narrative 
So I watched Philomena as soon as it was available here in the US. I absolutely loved this film. Understated, typically British and overwhelmingly intelligent, told with such simplicity. It stayed with me too. In fact, It is a film I carry with me still. I can’t imagine how you carry that weight of losing a part of you. 25-30 mins of not knowing where your little one went is eons in my book. How did you survive? oh my heart goes out to you.
That’s for reading. Yeah, it was a terrifying experience, I still have nightmares about it! The only good thing that came out of it was the realisation of how reliable my husband can be in a crisis 🙂
It’s always good to have one person balance it out during a crisis isn’t it? Mine is that way too 🙂
I don’t blame you for having nightmares. I would too.