Judi Dench and the Lost Child of Philomena Lee

Judi Dench, like her close friend Maggie Smith, is one of those nearly universally liked and admired British actresses who can be relied upon to add both dignity and dry humor to any production. Solid performances by these two celebrated Shakespearean actors, both born in 1934, have been sprinkled liberally throughout popular culture over the past decade or so (Judi in the James Bond franchise, and Maggie in the Harry Potter films and television's "Downton Abbey"), and though they have a century of acting experience between them, they are far better known by the U.S. public today than they were when they were the toast of the London stage and earning leading-lady roles in film and on British television. Maggie Smith became an international film star much earlier than her friend when she won an Academy Award for Best Actress in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in 1969, but among Americans she is best known for her supporting actress roles playing dry old ladies with withering insights. Judi Dench is much better known in the United Kingdom than in America; she was the star of several popular British television series and had successes on the stage in productions like "Cabaret" in London's West End as far back as 1968 as well as in serious roles like Lady Macbeth. When she became the first female incarnation of M in the James Bond film series beginning in 1995, she became better known to a wider assortment of international filmgoers, and winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth I in 1998's "Shakespeare in Love" gave her career a huge boost.

Like her friend Maggie Smith, Judi Dench often plays unsmiling, all-knowing, uncompromising women who cannot be fooled, but in her Oscar-nominated role as Philomena Lee in Stephen Frears's film "Philomena" she gives a unexpectedly soft, poignant and sympathetic performance that celebrates her versatility and range. The film is based on the true story of Irish woman Philomena Lee who became pregnant as a teenager in 1951 and was sent to a remote Irish abbey during her pregnancy. There she was forced by nuns to work as a laundress alongside other unwed mothers, and was made to stay on working at the laundry without pay for four more years both as penance for the sin of having had premarital sex and to pay the abbey for the costs of caring for her during her pregnancy. This practice of locking up unwed mothers in their teens (or even twenties) in what were known as "Magdalene asylums" or "Magdalene laundries" was common in Ireland and Britain in the 19th century, and it spread to other European countries and to the U.S. and Canada. The practice lasted well into the 20th century. The last Magdalene asylum in Ireland was in operation until 1996. At these workhouses girls were sometimes beaten, often locked inside against their will and sometimes forbidden to leave even after they became adults. The Catholic Church got a great deal of free labor from these women, and embarrassed parents of unwed pregnant teens were often so relieved to avoid the public shame of having their daughters' sins paraded before society that many abandoned their children to the Magdalene sisters forever. Families often told neighbors and friends that their daughters had gone to live with family, or emigrated, or even died, all in an effort to save themselves from shame and social ostracism.

While these teen girls worked long hours in the steamy laundries, their children were watched over by nuns in nurseries. At the abbey where Philomena lived, children were often adopted out to American married couples who sought children in return for generous donations to the abbey. Philomena was only able to spend a short time with her son each day, and her much-loved child was adopted by an American couple and taken away from the nursery with no warning one day while she was working. Philomena had no chance to say goodbye, she had no idea that her little boy had been flown to America, and she was not told that his named had been changed. All her efforts to learn what became of her son were rebuffed by the abbey, which destroyed her records and denied knowledge of her son's name and whereabouts. Ashamed by her plight but desperately sad to have lost her son, Philomena sought him secretly for a half century without luck, and then finally told her daughter the truth. She and her daughter enlisted the help of Martin Sixsmith, a journalist and former government advisor to the Labour Party who was out of work and searching for a journalistic assignment, and the two convinced him to help Philomena in her search. Martin and Philomena ended up traveling to America together and learning extraordinary things about Philomena's son and about the abbey's deceptive practices. Their story of their adventure together was published by Sixsmith in 2009 in his book "The Lost Child of Philomena Lee," described by the L.A. Times as "a serio-comic travelogue full of heart-rending discovery and the triumph of forgiveness over hate." For a link to a Daily Mail article describing the story in detail (including spoilers that you might want to wait to read about if you plan to see the film and want to be surprised), click here.

When I first saw previews for the film, I feared it might be a manipulative tear-jerker about a sweet, naive old lady with a can-do attitude and a big heart, the sort of story that could turn sickly sweet in under a minute if directed poorly or written by a sappy screenwriter. On the other hand, it stars Judi Dench and satirist Steve Coogan, two actors famous for their droll, dry, whip-smart screen performances. I doubted Coogan in particular would want to completely suppress his innate sarcasm and cynicism throughout the course of an entire film. Furthermore, Coogan was the cowriter of the screenplay, and I've seen evidence of his dark wit in films like "The Trip" and "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story." In England he's well known for his popular creation, a character named Alan Partridge decribed as "a socially awkward and politically incorrect regional media personality." I knew better than to expect mindless, treacly antics from him or from director Stephen Frears, whose dark, smart films like "My Beautiful Laundrette" (which starred a young Daniel Day-Lewis), "Prick Up Your Ears" (with Gary Oldman), "Dangerous Liaisons" (with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer) and "The Grifters" (a dark little masterpiece with John Cusack, Annette Bening and Anjelica Huston) have impressed me for three decades.

Frears directed John Cusack to delicious perfection in one of the few comic films I find worth watching repeatedly, "High Fidelity," and he led Helen Mirren to her Academy Award for Best Actress playing Queen Elizabeth II in "The Queen." Frears has no fear of difficult subjects or ugly moments. Weighing all these facts, I put aside my worries that this could be a manipulative feel-good movie that would make my eyes roll and went to see it with a bit of a "prove yourself to me" attitude. Happily, my fears that the too-cute trailer for the film would prove to be an accurate microcosm of the film itself proved unfounded, and I instead found it a movingly acted film about an unworldly, seemingly simple woman who is more complex and determined than people expect.

The battle between the jaded, antireligious cynicism of Martin and the every-day-is-a-gift positivity of Philomena is at the core of the film, but we see a spirited openmindedness in devout and seemingly old-fashioned Philomena. Her sense of hopefulness and appreciation for small kindnesses is nicely balanced by exasperation with Martin's dour, dark, angry worldview. He is not won over by her endless sweet simplicity; he is moved by her because he recognizes that she has insights into people and situations that he, with all his experience and inside information but lack of empathy, misses. Martin recognizes that her story is a door into a huge and devastating world of widespread, long-term institutional abuse of the most vulnerable among us: abandoned, pregnant teen girls and small children. He sees that Philomena has a power to connect with people that he lacks because he is often closed to anything but the fulfillment of his own expectations and prejudices. The journey they take together becomes more tangled than they expect, and it becomes more personally engaging and meaningful than Martin could have guessed.

The real Philomena Lee will attend the Academy Awards presentation in early March, where her story has been nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Score awards. Though now eighty years old, Philomena is currently traveling the world in her effort to help mothers who have lost children to forced adoptions. I doubt that she could have found a more effective or talented mouthpiece for her story than Dame Judi. Nor could Judi have found a more agreeable and appealing inspiration for her work than Philomena.