This is part 5 of Benjamin Rybeck’s coverage of the Best Adapted Screenplay nominees at the 86th Academy Awards. Full spoilers follow.
“Philomena is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman.”
Actress Judi Dench writes these well-meaning words in the foreword to the movie tie-in edition of Martin Sixsmith’s book—you know, the edition with co-stars Dench and Steve Coogan (who wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope) adorning the cover. But it’s unclear whether Dench refers to the film or its source material, for the movie tie-in extends to the very name of Sixsmith’s book, originally titled The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, but renamed—for this edition, and probably for all time—Philomena. For obvious reasons, this semantic difference is major.
Sixsmith, a journalist, wrote his book after becoming interested in the story of Philomena Lee, an elderly Irish woman and devout Catholic whose son, born out of wedlock, was taken from her by nuns and adopted into an American family. It turns out that Philomena’s son—renamed Michael Hess—became a leading attorney for the Republican Party in the 1980s (he specialized in pro-redistricting arguments) who hid his homosexual lifestyle, fearing alienation. He spent a lifetime wondering about his mother (who, he was told, had abandoned him), even traveling to Ireland to try to learn her identity (the nuns claimed ignorance). Michael Hess died of AIDS in 1995.
The Lost Child of Philomena Lee is Sixsmith’s reconstruction of Michael Hess’s life, from his time as a child in the convent, to growing up in the American Midwest, to landing in Washington, D.C., first as a student and, years later, a lawyer. He falls into a series of relationships with men and walks the line between his private and personal lives. His boyfriends and friends wonder, How can a gay man work for Republicans? Frankly, Hess wonders too, and this struggle—along with Hess’s search for his mother—becomes a major narrative thread.
Sixsmith’s book is a sprawling one whose pleasures are primarily “novelistic.” Save for a few chapters in which the author sits at his desk and muses about photographs, the book moves chronologically through time, and Sixsmith allows himself omniscience, entering the heads of nearly every character: not only Philomena Lee (in the early chapters) and Michael Hess, but also the nuns in the convent, Hess’ adopted family, his friends and boyfriends, and even the officials in the Irish government who worked to curtail the Catholic Church’s policy of untraceable adoptions of “illegitimate” children.
The obvious film adaptation would’ve been a biopic, focused on Hess. But that would’ve posed narrative problems. Until his illness, Hess faced little outward struggle in his life; most of his battles were fought internally, which makes for difficult cinema, a medium that depends upon externalization. Furthermore, the central mystery of the book—who is Michael Hess’s mother?—is something the reader knows but that Hess never figures out before his death. Try to imagine that ending in a film, and how unsatisfying it would be: not because of its tragedy, but because of its inertia.
Instead, Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope more or less chose to adapt Sixsmith’s 11-page epilogue, in which he describes the efforts behind writing the book (e.g., learning the identity of Philomena’s son, interviewing those who knew him, etc. etc.). The film Philomena focuses on the relationship between Philomena and Sixsmith. The super-objective for both of them is to find out about Michael Hess: Philomena needs to learn what happened to her son, and Sixsmith needs to write an article and redeem himself after a series of professional setbacks. Motivation is clear, stakes are high, and the three-act structure is, well, there.
What else can I say? This is one of those “perfect” screenplays (in Syd Field or Robert McKee terms). As directed by Stephen Frears, a craftsman whose post-Grifters films—ranging from High Fidelity to The Queen—have demonstrated no consistent vision (unlike the films of Scorsese, Greengrass, and McQueen), Philomena is average cinema. It’s moving, but bluntly so. It takes the Christian notion of grace seriously (which, in this age of cinematic cynicism, shows bravery), but it gains its effects too easily in other places. Much comedy gets milked from the pairing of “simple” Philomena with “cosmopolitan” Sixsmith (played by Coogan with the same smugness on which he has been riffing for years), but you get no points for guessing that Philomena winds up being the “wiser” of the two. This crude narrative construction is made tolerable only by the strength of the actors (Dench and Coogan have genuine chemistry—so much so that I kept hoping they’d launch into dueling Michael Caine impressions).
Philomena isn’t a bad film. It is, however, the weakest nominee in an exceptionally strong Best Adapted Screenplay category (which, in my opinion, contains four of the five best English-language films of the year, missing only Inside Llewyn Davis). Yet, ironically, Philomena also represents the greatest imaginative leap in its “screenwriting,” taking a nearly un-adaptable book—one distinctly literary in its attributes—and translating it into a film that mostly works. This is an example of what I wrote about back on Monday: The producers who optioned this book were interested in making a film out of the story, yes, but not necessarily out of Sixsmith’s book. That’s how The Lost Child of Philomena became, simply, Philomena.
Don’t underestimate this film, however: Although 12 Years a Slave seems the likely winner in this category (a Best Picture frontrunner whose screenplay has already picked up numerous awards from critics’ groups, not to mention the USC Scripter Award), upsets are always possible. And if any film is going to upset 12 Years a Slave, it’ll be Philomena.
