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Cabrini
Cabrini Official Theatrical Poster (WikiMedia Commons)
“New York is built upon the dead.” So begins the trailer for the movie Cabrini. The film from Angel Studios is the story of Cabrini, an Italian immigrant who arrives in New York City in 1889. Her first encounter with the metropolis is disease and death. She takes it upon herself to provide housing and healthcare for the most vulnerable. Overcoming the problems of learning a new language, her own poor health, and the obstinate opposition of New York’s mayor, Cabrini’s work is successful. As she says in the film, “If we are to build an empire of hope, it seems we must first conquer New York.”
Mocked, threatened, and persecuted, Cabrini rebuilt a city from the ground up, caring first for those who could not help themselves. I admit that I have a soft spot when it comes to protecting women. But it turns out Cabrini would not have needed my help. When told that she would have made an excellent man because of her entrepreneurial skills, Cabrini replies, “No. Men could never do what we women do.”
The director of Cabrini, Alegandro Monteverde, also directed Sound of Freedom. Find a link to our review of this and other Monteverde projects at the end of this Truth in Two. Monteverde’s directorial life has been committed to stories about protection of the most vulnerable in society, beginning with the unborn. Monteverde reflects what a visitor would find at Angel Studios landing page suggesting the studio’s mission: “stories that amplify light.” As the movie site Fandango suggests “Cabrini uses her entrepreneurial mind to build an empire of hope unlike anything the world had ever seen.” Cabrini opened this past weekend. At the time of this writing, the crowd sourced movie had already sold two million tickets. In celebration of Women’s History Month, For the Comenius Institute, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found. [First published at MarkEckel.com]
LINKS
Bella https://warpandwoof.org/bella/
Sound of Freedom https://markeckel.com/2023/07/17/gods-children/
Published in Entertainment
It takes a long time to create a movie. A lot of the filming was done in Buffalo, in 2021! Of course that was during covid hysteria, which must have complicated things.
Some behind-the-scenes shots in this article:
https://wyrk.com/cabrini-movie-buffalo/
Went to see it on Saturday. A few quibbles (too long, not enough G-d and prayer) but enjoyed it. My husband went to St. Frances Cabrini school in Alexandria, LA, so he was interested to learn more of her story.
I’ve read some reviews by fellow Catholics who, while praising the film in some areas, fault it for showing very little of Mother Cabrini’s faith and life of prayer. One reviewer said that Mother Cabrini comes off as a proto-feminist, not a devout Catholic woman whose faith was central to her mission.
@painterjean I suspect I have read some of those same reviews. I agree that it would have been beneficial to be clearer about the focus on Jesus, prayer, and a distinctive connection to Matthew 25. I am glad to be able to point people to a Christian film that shows The Church in action, specifically the role Christians have played “doing good” (Titus 3:1, 8, 14) in America (and by extension, for any culture, nation, people group, or historical period). Thanks so much for your good word here.
@MattBartle thanks so much for this connection to the filming! I grew up around Syracuse; the connection to Buffalo made me smile!
Mark, I did go to Cabrini with a friend who, like me, is a devout Catholic. We both enjoyed it immensely. It’s beautifully done, and while it’s true that her faith is not focused on, it’s there. It’s clearly there – I don’t think it would be possible to tell her story without her faith shining through.
Wife and i saw this yesterday, and we’re glad we did. It’s maybe just a little long, but even so they barely scratched the surface of what she accomplished. A postscript listed the institutions she founded all over the world, pointing out that she did as much as, say, Carnegie.
IMDB says this is a real quote: “The world is too small for what I intend to do.”
As far as films go, the outward trappings of any society almost always filter into a portrayal of an individual or a movement, as well as the resistance to the movement.
Some Hollywood guy, maybe David MacLean, said that a movie almost always mistakenly includes elements of its own current day culture, and then he referred to the hairstyles of the women in “Doctor Zhivago.” (The hairstyles of Julie Christie and Geraldine Chaplin which were offshoots of how women wore their hair back in the 1960’s and not in the Nineteen Teens in Russia.)
That being said, I think there is a real hunger present in those of us who love traditional standards and we do desire to see those standards represented in films. Especially in those films where the standards were the guidelines for the past society.
Cabrini got a pretty positive review from the Critical Drinker (language warning if you aren’t familiar with the Drinker):