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Your Stool is Outstanding

This is not a report on Swedish furniture.  Nor is it admiration of someone's feces.

This is one of the opening remarks a doctor makes to the protagonist of a film called 'Philomena'.    The hero of the film appears to find this remark as curious praise until he realizes that the doctor meant he has not yet submitted a stool sample as part of his physical exam.

A mildly humrous yet rather serious film about a mother's quest to search for her son taken away from her for adoption 50 years ago.

This story like some recent productions is "based on real events" and could mean anything but the film version is positively entertaining.  Co produced by BBC films this one got some nominations from the Motion Picture Academy aka Oscars.  It did not win but I think that is only an opinion.

Judi Dench plays the distraught yet firm of mind mother who certainly deserves a lot of credit for the role she played.  I have enjoyed her other roles including the stern and matronly 'M' who is 007's boss; as well as a retired Brit looking for a change of pace in Rajasthan, India in the movie 'The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel'.

This movie was largely a dialog between two people as they go searching for her son to the US (from Ireland) only to find (Spoiler Alert!) he died of AIDS and was buried in the Irish abbey where they began their search in the first place.

Sometimes intense with grief and insights about people and their short comings it ends with a quote from T.S. Eliot -

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

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  1. RajendraApril 20, 2014 at 7:36 AM

    sounds like The Alchemist. Except for the AIDS death, of course..

    ReplyDelete

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