No sentiment just facts in Fatima TV treat

This August a new feature film, Fatima, is due in cinemas. It stars Harvey Keitel and the trailers look really interesting. Readers may well remember the 1952 version, The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, starring Gilbert Roland. I saw it years ago and was impressed.

The 13th Day (EWTN, Sunday) from 2009 was another more recent take on the story of the apparitions. Written and directed by Ian and Dominic Higgins it was a visual treat. Each frame of the film would make for a beautiful still picture – mostly it’s black and white, with colour being used when Our Lady appears and Heaven touches the earth. The style reminded me of arty YouTube videos, European cinema, and even The Blair Witch Project (visual effect, not content!).

The film was almost surreal in its presentation, which made it quite captivating. It seemed to tell the Fatima story faithfully, framing it by using the reminiscences of Sr Lucia as she writes her memoirs. However it was somewhat episodic, always a potential problem when filming real life events.

I also felt also that there was too much narration and not enough dialogue given to the actors which made it difficult for them to really inhabit their roles. That being said, the girl who played the young Lucia, Filipa Fernandez, had a striking screen presence, crucial when she was the central personality of the film.

There was one rather scary angel and a disturbing vision of hell which might make it unsuitable for very young children, but the scene of the miracle of the sun was quite striking and captured the essence of the film.

One thing the filmmakers have achieved is to present this timeless story to a modern audience in an idiom they can understand and relate to. I didn’t find it corny or preachy or sentimental, and these are also traps that a religious film can fall into.

Now, after that brief respite, it’s back to the Covid-19 world. This is a time when we’ve all had to make sacrifices, and put up with severe restrictions on our activities. But one thing has bugged me – the way our Government has contrived, after all this, to ease restrictions on abortion, facilitating those unsafe home abortions that they warned against as a wedge to bring in legal abortions in the first place.

At a time when solidarity has rightly been the order of the day, living unborn children have been ignored, abandoned or sacrificed yet again on the altar of choice.

As we willingly give up ‘bodily autonomy’ in so many areas of our lives, the pro-choice activists seek and are granted even more freedom. Despite consuming too many hours of media coverage I haven’t heard anyone being challenged on this anomaly/scandal.

Definition

Last Monday morning on the Today programme (BBC Radio 4) there was an item on how, in some states in the USA, abortions were banned along with other elective or non-essential medical procedures. As the Attorney General for the state of Texas Ken Paxton said, by the very logic of pro-choice activists abortions were a matter of choice, and therefore by definition, elective.

The reporter said Paxton “played with the semantics” when he followed the logic of the pro-choice language. The item was thoroughly biased in favour of the pro-choice view, with the inevitable hard being case used to manipulate emotions.

It was undeniably sad – a woman pregnant with twins learned that one had died and that the other had a life limiting condition. She didn’t want ‘that’ to be allowed to continue, and, abandoning the language of choice, decided she ‘had to’ have an abortion.

Then, from a ‘reproductive health’ (!) clinic in New Mexico, we got an interview with Dr Eve Espey who was given the opportunity to get in an unchallenged dig at anti-abortion activists.

The BBC let itself down as it frequently does when covering this issue.

Finally, on last weekend’s Sunday Sequence (BBC Radio Ulster), The Irish Catholic editor Michael Kelly spoke of the “emotional wrench” suffered by priests who were not able to give the usual full support to families suffering bereavement. Older priests were often the ones who knew the deceased best but many of them were in isolation, while younger priests were in short supply and had to take up an increased workload.

The necessary social distancing went against their every instinct.

Pick of the Week

Crash Course in JPII

EWTN, Saturday (night), May 9, 2.30 am

Leading up to the 100th anniversary of his birth, a review the life and legacy of St Pope John Paul II, a series continuing nightly.

Fatima, The Ultimate Mystery

EWTN, Sunday, May 10, 9 pm

Did the miracle at Fatima alter the course of history? This documentary film reveals strange coincidences and ignored events that support that conclusion.