Mother Teresa: In the Name of God's Poor

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05/20/2016 She was the opposite of a saint. Loved the suffering of people because it was her belief that suffering brought people closer to God. Freaking idiot. See more 05/08/2012 This is not a film about a saint, unless you count canonisation by the media a true mark of sainthood, in which case most biopics about the "architects of the culture of death" would count as saints' lives. This is a film about a philanthropist who won the Nobel peace prize, and who happened to be a nun. What kind of nun is difficult to tell from the film, since she seems to have owed about as much to Gandhi (that other saint of the media) as to Jesus, and believed all religions worshiped the same God (another bromide of our religiously illiterate culture.) When she turns a former Hindu temple into a hospital, she considers it "already blessed for God's work", whereas an orthodox Catholic would probably have viewed it as in need of exorcism because of its association with idolatry. Films about saints are extremely rare, and when they do get produced, they are usually released directly to DVD, and those DVDs are not distributed properly: try to do a search for "Clare and Francis" on dvdpricesearch for instance. And when you find one that is widely available and features stars like Geraldine Chaplin, you have the right to be suspicious. In this case, what you get is the standard Hallmark treatment. I have a personal hatred of Hallmark movies. Whatever they are about, they are trite, bland, politically correct, "consensual", Americanised, watered down products, filled with feel-good cliches and prefabricated kleenex moments and merely contribute to the media fog that prevents us from getting at the truth of things. In this case, Mother Teresa becomes a mere apostle of religious tolerationism and a one-woman welfare state, a kind of grandmotherly liberal icon whose more Catholic traits are edited out. Her orthodox stand on abortion, for instance, is never referred to, which is all the more blameworthy as she spoke on the subject in her Nobel prize speech, with which the film ends. I will not go into the debate of whether Mother Teresa was actually a saint or not. A rather informative article can be found at the following url: http://www.traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_025br_MotherTeresa_Zima.htm See more 05/08/2012 watched 'Mother Teresa' by Olivia Hussey in a theatre... See more 05/08/2012 Bon film, sur une femme extraordinaire. See more 05/08/2012 Nice perfs, but does little to challenge or even complexify the potted versions of the the Mother Theresa story. See more 05/08/2012 Amazing, powerful, inspiring. If all people had only 5% of her goodness in them... See more Read all reviews

Mother Teresa: In the Name of God's Poor

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