Biopic that’s nun too subtle, but nun too shabby either
Cabrini (M, 145 mins) Directed by Alejandro Monteverde Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
Maria Frances Cabrini was born in Lombardy in 1850, in an area which is today in northern Italy, but which was then part of
Austria.
She was a premature and sickly infant and was expected to join the majority of her many brothers and sisters in not surviving childhood. But, Maria lived and became an accomplished student. She was drawn to a life in education, became a teacher and, by the time she was in her late 20s, was head-mistress of a school in the town of Codogno.
Maria served the Catholic Church devotedly as a teacher and, in 1877, she took her vows as a nun and decided that God was telling her to become a missionary.
With seven other women, Maria founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart and set about building schools and orphanages in Austria and Italy. Her work came to the attention of Pope Leo XXIII and Maria was invited to Rome.
At that meeting, Maria told the pope she wanted to lead a mission to China. The pope decided – for reasons I would love to have explained to me – that the Lord God could find more use for Maria and her followers in New York City.
And so, in 1889, Maria Cabrini and her Sisters of the Sacred Heart landed at New York's Ellis Island and found themselves trying to set up shop for the Lord in the disease and crime-ridden hell hole that would one day be known as Lower Manhattan.
Maria Cabrini attracted support and funding from church leaders and politicians of the day, she fought back against the racists who hated Italians and the creeps who hated women and, over the course of three decades, she established dioceses, schools, orphanages, asylums and hospitals across New York, Chicago, Denver, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
After she died in 1917, the process to have Maria Cabrini beatified – the first step in declaring her a saint – was underway almost immediately. Today, Maria Xavier Cabrini is recognised as the first American saint, the patron Saint of Immigrants and is also – this is true – regularly invoked by drivers looking for a car park, on the perfectly sensible grounds that since she lived in New York City, she might have some sympathy.
Director Alejandro Monteverde (Sound of Freedom) does a fine job at getting the broad strokes of Cabrini's life on to the screen in a way that keeps the story easy to follow and doesn't allow for much confusion as to who the good guys and the villains might be.
Monteverde isn't the most subtle director around, but he knows how to move a camera and mostly keeps the story heading forwards. At nearly two-and-a-half hours, Cabrini isn't a brisk film, but there usually seems to be enough happening in the script to justify the running time.
Although Cabrini is unashamedly a religious film, there is still plenty here to keep any curious heathens in the audience happy and interested.
In the title role, Cristiana Dell'Anna (Gomorrah) is feisty and winsomely implacable, facing down pimps and archbishops as though they are all pretty much the same to her. David Morse (The Chair) and John Lithgow are as effective as you would expect in a couple of solid cameos.
The story of Maria Cabrini – in this telling – is a classic yarn of a migrant who will not be denied a place in their chosen new home. This might be a story of a devoutly religious woman, but it is also a terrific fable of entrepreneurship and industry.
Cabrini is a handsomely staged thrash at taking a remarkable life and fashioning a watchable film from it. It is also a fairly rare cinematic outing in the last few decades in which the Catholic Church
– and particularly the people who run their schools and orphanages – actually look like the good guys. Take that as a recommendation if you wish.
Cabrini is screening in select cinemas nationwide.