The Pillar, a Catholic newsletter, wrote a review of ‘Cabrini’, the movie, in the Tuesday, March 12, 2024 edition. https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/st-fina-cabrini-and-bishop-birthdays Mr. Flynn wrote several screen-scrolls of explanation of all the other religious movies he didn’t like, and how he was hoping that this one would be different, and by the time he got there you already knew, he didn’t like this one, either. 

Among other things he says, “And I didn’t like Cabrini because I wasn’t really sure what it was trying to do — what kind of movie it wanted to be.” 

However, this is his description of a scene in the movie. 

… when an on-the-verge-of-reforming prostitute told Mother Cabrini that no amount of water could make her clean, I expected that Cabrini would tell her about the water of baptism, or about Jesus Christ, the living water, and the power of God’s mercy in confession.

For an evangelist, “there’s not enough water in the world to make me clean” is like a fat, slow pitch right over the plate, just waiting for a Catholic to knock it out of the park.

Instead, Mother Cabrini told the would-be penitent that she was a “strong woman.”

“We have something in common,” Mother Cabrini said, “We are both survivors.”

Mr. Flynn did not like this failure to evangelize.

Did I see the same movie? That prostitute was not on the verge of reforming. She was recovering from a beating and sexual assault, during which she had stabbed her pimp and killed him. This occurs after a scene where the procurer, who has come by to make trouble, is shot at by a young boy who has a gun. Mother Cabrini makes the boy choose between keeping the gun or staying with her community. She also makes sure the wounded man gets to the hospital, and when he gets out he goes after ‘his’ prostitute, again. Hence, the assault and resulting death.

Though I was annoyed elsewhere when I expected the movie to bring God up, I’m not sure that this scene was a mistake. Is this actually the moment to tell her that God loves her? She might have wondered why He had allowed the whole situation to arise! She had tried to help Mother Cabrini (in the film), and this was her reward?!

“In any bit of narrative storytelling, we’re engaged when the protagonist has a kind of transformation over the course of the story — when they start out one way, and then face some crisis or ethical dilemma, in which neither we nor they are sure what what will happen — and then when they come out a different person on the other side.” 

Flynn wanted this to be done here, as he says,

“That could have been done with more exploration of her faith, which would have had the virtue of being true to life.” 

Maybe. Maybe not. I went and read a bit of biography on Mother Cabrini, and a few of her letters. She wrote a lot while she was traveling because that was usually the only time she had to write. I didn’t read anything about her conversion to deep holiness, but there’s quite a bit of her reflections on God and his love. If I’d read more, there might have been some trial that could have been used to give her a narrative arc. I did find this excerpt from a letter she wrote on a boat from the US to Europe, which convinced me I would have failed as one of her nuns. The nuns had already had a tough time with seasickness, and this is what she wrote to the nuns left behind.. 

Last night the weather threatened to break and the Sisters asked me if we were going to have good weather, because if it were bad they had made up their minds where to go and how to spend their time. I told them that if we humbled ourselves profoundly for our faults, holding ourselves to blame for all the acts of frailty that sea-sickness caused us to commit, God would be propitious to us. At first some refused to acknowledge that they were in fault, saying it was the sea that caused so much discomfort, but remembering the promise they had made of suffering willingly for the holy cause of the Mission, they felt themselves obliged to humble themselves profoundly, and our dear Jesus in the truly paternal goodness of His Heart granted us good weather, and so we are all assembled on the first class deck. You see, humility works wonders. All expected bad weather, and, instead, we have fine weather.

Flynn spoke to the scriptwriter about the movie.  “Where [the scriptwriter] saw a character arc, I saw a linear progression — a bound and determined figure who let no obstacle stand in her way, ever, under any circumstances.”  Well? Honestly, I don’t think a scene like the above would have helped the movie.

The reason I’m being so pointed about this is because I, myself, am confused about how to tell the stories of saints. Often, the narrative arc, described above, simply isn’t going to be enough.** What happens when the saint is no longer overcoming self? This should happen and then he or she should be revealing what can be done, when self is no longer the issue. ‘Cabrini’ does show Mother Cabrini overcoming horrific obstacles; they just aren’t internal. I’m on record as saying that the movie doesn’t show this saint relying on God as much as she absolutely did, but I’m not sure what the correct balance is here.  https://catholicfictioncatholicscience.com/2024/03/12/cabrini-is-worth-seeing/

At the end of the day, I went and looked up this saint, because I was intrigued by the incredible work she did, which I only knew about because of the movie. That’s a real credit to the movie.

A review from a different perspective.

Film Review: Cabrini honors life and legacy of ironclad immigrant saint

Rabbit holes ~+~+~+~

** Louis De Wohl solved the story problem for his biography of Saint Thomas Aquinas, (The Quiet Light) by inventing a character whose life intersected with the life of Saint Thomas at crucial points. That character had an arc, but Saint Thomas did not. He was an unflinching Dominican monk, without self-doubt, against whom troubles broke, and rolled away. It’s a lovely book with a lot of surprises, and a tremendous foreshadowing of Dante.

Personal reflection … I heard Nicky Cruz (author of Run Baby Run) give a talk, once. He was a part of a gang in New York in the late fifties, when David Wilkerson (famous back then for doing gang outreach) was running a mission. Wilkerson was seen by the young Nicky as a foolish idealist, but at a crucial moment, Cruz changed. Instead of robbing Wilkerson, as he planned, he started helping him. I heard Cruz talk about twenty-five years later. He said that he had been a Christian for twenty-five years by then, but the only thing people wanted to hear about was the one moment when he changed. So, he said, he would tell us about it, but he also wanted us to know that there’s a lot more to life.

 And while we are at it, since Mr. Flynn brought up the movie, “God’s Not Dead”, I feel the need to point out that people say the protagonist in that movie converted a whole college class, and all was rosy after that. Nope. That is not what happened. He, maybe, converted one other student. But what made the rest of the class change their minds, about what to write on their paper, was this. The protagonist forced the professor to admit that he believed God was very much alive. It’s just that he, the professor hated God with a white hot, burning, hatred. This result was brought about, by the way, not through reason, but through emotion. The adage, that you can’t reason someone out of a position that they didn’t get into with reason, holds very true here. There’s a lot of stuff in that movie that I don’t care for, but I think we should remain accurate about what actually happened in it.