Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
In a century long ago, I attended a party, primarily of strangers; as we entered the venue, a person of renown was taped to our backs; we were required to give hints to other attendees as to the personage whose name they bore; it was a stunning way to make new comrades, but alas I never guessed who steadfastly remained unacknowledged: Mother Cabrini (1850-1917). I was in the shadows as to her reputation; before Google and instant edification she periodically invaded and haunted my formative years.
“Cabrini” directed by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde (“Sound of Freedom”) and starring stoic Cristiana Dell’Anna (Frances Xavier Cabrini) is a portrait of the “huddled masses”, a metaphor for all who clamored to roam the corridors of sovereignty, paved by immigrants, one ethnicity after another: from Christopher Columbus, Norse, English, Dutch, Ireland, on and on, driven by economic and religious incentives; the Italians arrive en masse in the late 1800’s; Mother Cabrini came with her cloister of nuns in 1899; slandered, persecuted, ignored, maligned, forging the hollows of horrendous poverty, crime; homeless children, living in rat-infested sewers, the objects of Mother Cabrini’s mission, fortitude and bonified success. Her story is one of legends, of heroic, glorious magnitude, a sanctified tale that led to sainthood; canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1946, patroness of immigrants and the first American citizen awarded this distinction.
As time has devoured the present, leaving a wide swath of history in its wake, I have often pondered why she was serendipitously chosen as one I should be acquainted with? Illusively, the answer perpetually evaporates, leaving palatable gratitude and fortuitous joy that no one could be more worthy of emulation.
FOUR STARS!!!!
Peneflix
