22/35
Cabrini: We can serve our weakness or our purpose
Synopsis
After witnessing disease and poverty in the slums of New York, Italian immigrant Francesca Cabrini embarks on a daring journey to convince the hostile mayor to provide housing and healthcare to hundreds of orphans. The film was screened by the nuns of Mother Cabrini’s order, some of whom were in their 90s. At the end of the film, many of them were crying, with some shouting, “THAT’S Cabrini!” Archbishop Corrigan was not the son of poor, working-class Irish immigrants in New York City. Corrigan was born in New Jersey to Irish immigrants who owned a grocery and liquor store in Newark and were wealthy.
Dare To Be, played by Andrea Bocelli and Virginia Bocelli
Not both. Featured on The Glenn Beck Program: Is ‘Cabrini’ the BEST Christian movie since ‘The Passion of the Christ’ (2024). Angel Studios does something interesting here: they make non-didactic, values-based films that are acceptable to the average, non-religious moviegoer, and yet they use a “pay it forward” system of benefactors to passionately promote the film and literally pay for others to see it. Moreover, this film, as well as Sound of Freedom, are extremely well made for the low-budget independent films that they are.
The cinematography, the same as in Sound of Freedom (director and cinematographer), is once again very beautiful and visually stunning
They don’t attract top talent because of religious guilt (like a Kirk Cameron’s Left Behind film or a film about religious dogma like God’s Still Not Dead might), but no, these actors are playing these roles because of what I think they see in the script. David Morse, a veteran actor, plays one of his best roles in years, and even a cameo-style supporting role by John Lithgow (the Mayor) lets him cook and breathe slimy life into another wonderful villain role. Cristina Dell Anna in the title role is strong throughout and while she probably won’t get the same amount of attention at the Oscars due to critics’ bias against the studio (which, I believe, according to the stories, is run by Q’anon followers), her role and many other roles in the film are no worse than Oscar-bait roles in similar films like Little Women. Even though some critics protest (unfairly in my opinion), whether you like it or not, it is well-made, inexpensive and efficient cinema…
The film has no meta-self-aware bones in its structure and that’s refreshing
exactly the kind of serious, mid-budget adult cinema that was once Hollywood’s bread and butter. If the studios aren’t willing to make it, I’m glad someone is keeping the tradition going. In the race of creators to reinvent the wheel of film theory, we forget about these feel-good stories until one comes along and reminds us how much we need a nice, uplifting, non-society-challenging story. The last film to have that kind of feeling, without religious guilt, was The Upside.
I read one critic called it boring, but I disagree
I predict this film could do pretty well with feel-good audiences too, and their praise and money matter too! I think it’s the kind of film that blatantly appeals to the emotions rather than the intellect, which some today call manipulative, but when it’s done for a non-dogmatic reason, it’s just called filmmaking. If religious people made more use of films like this, which are edifying and not didactic, not cliched, and convey more reality than biblical theories, I think more people outside the church would understand their perspective. Only when you sit in a movie (like I’ve seen a thousand times) where a cruel and unfeeling God seems to be very present behind every misery, when idiots like Kirk Cameron act “holier than thou” and say hateful things supposedly to convert you, does the average person reject it.