Review of “Mother Theresa”
“What can a single person do against all the evils of the world?” So asks a nun in 1948, as she watches the then unknown Mother Teresa leave the confines of a small convent to help the poor on the streets of Calcutta. Thirty years later, that same frail woman, known across the world as the embodiment of compassion, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The film traces her life from 1948 until her much mourned death in 1997, and from its opening moment, proclaims itself unashamedly sentimental. It portrays this uncomplicated woman’s life as a series of moments where dogged persistence and faith overcome obstacles of bureaucracy, prejudice, poverty, and poor health. In both the choice of these moments and in their emphasis, it is the mysterious way that god helps Teresa that is foregrounded. This has the effect of protecting her status – perhaps the objective of the filmmakers – but at the expense of a deeper understanding of the person, and with missed opportunities to find a richer vein of drama. An interesting relationship is set up with an unnamed journalist and then passed over. In real life it was Malcolm Muggeridge, who’s 1969 documentary brought Mother Teresa to the world’s attention. Similarly, we meet a wealthy donor who turns out to be corrupt (in real life, publisher Robert Maxwell), yet we do not explore the dramatic and ethical issues that arise. There is no mention of her outspoken views on abortion. Good people doing good deeds are rarely the stuff of good stories, and the careful scripting of some of these more controversial aspects of her life would have provided shadow and depth.
The scenes of life in Calcutta (filmed in Sri Lanka) brim with colour, crowds and chaos, and the photography more than compensates for a rather stilted style of performance. Olivia Hussey does an excellent job of portraying the strong yet self-sacrificing Blessed Mother.
Overall, it’s a syrupy chocolate box of a biography. Yet I was moved at the ending, drawn into the world of those who had been touched by her devotion to principles we find so easy to admire yet so hard to live by. The closing words struck a chord: “everything we do is just a drop in the ocean, but if we don’t do it, it will be missing for ever.”
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