Film Review: Fatima (2020)
It must be admitted–albeit reluctantly–that film is an elusive media for the things I hold most dear; namely, Catholicism and the liberty movement. Catholic faith-based films, often in spite of some sizable budgets, come off as overly saccharine, inauthentic and corny. Liberty themed films usually meet the same fate. There are exceptions of course. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and the film versions of Becket and A Man for All Seasons stand out. I frankly can’t think of a film outside of the documentary sphere that meets the criterion of a great film that had an explicitly libertarian theme. I suppose if you stretch The Matrix and count American Made as respective works urging red-pilling and stopping the drug war, then those do count as good anomalies.
Thankfully, Fatima also counts as a good anomaly, in part because it conveys the truth about God’s anomalous actions and divine intrusions into the 20th century, one like ours today, dominated by all too many modernist visions of human utopia which inevitably turned into catastrophes. God broke in, through the Principality of Portugal and the Blessed Virgin Mary, to speak to three humble shepherd children in 1917. And the power of that intrusion is beautifully conveyed here.
The script is faithful to the history of the Fatima apparitions, with the exception of the second secret regarding errors stemming from Russia that would go on to infect the world. One can only speculate as to why there was such a glaring omission. But, I can overlook that, given that as I watched with my kids, they were declaring it their favorite movie “ever” about a third of the way through. Beyond the appeal, they committed to saying the Rosary every night as a family. As the film accurately presents, at Fatima, Mary delayed revealing who she was when the children asked. When she finally acceded, she identified herself as “the Lady of the Rosary”. My kids were so engrossed in the film that they took on the roles of praying beside Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco.
Their father was as well. I regained an appreciation for Fatima, one that perhaps had faded in recent years. Beyond that, however, I saw how timely the film is, especially how it tactfully reveals the institutional Church’s closemindedness to the further disclosure of revelation. Lucia, played by the brilliant-beyond-her-years Stephanie Gil, sympathizes with one dubious monseigneur: “I am sorry you cannot see her.” His blindness is willful and convenient; it is much more comfortable for the religious authorities to maintain the status quo with the state rather than let the divine pour in and intrude upon the profane. The greatest sin of the doubters then, aside from the complacency, is their pride: How dare Our Lord and His Mother speak to dirty, illiterate children instead of me, the bishop, the prelate? Oh, He dares, and as Scripture reveals time and time again, He prefers it.
Fatima ought to be appreciated then because it ultimately achieves the thought-to-be impossible from my perspective. It is a film that deepens faith and advocates for human freedom–authentic human freedom.
God, please always bless the anomalous.
