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| Images courtesy of Angel Studios |
The last time the film world saw Mexican writer-director Alejandro
Gómez Monteverde on the silver screen was in 2023 with the controversial Angel
Studios produced faith-based film Sound of Freedom. A film that seemed to split filmgoers and
Christians down the middle, the film was a marked return to productivity for
the director whose prior film Little Boy came out all the way back in
2015. While I didn’t see Sound of Freedom
which stoked QAnon conspiracy theories and a wide variety of other
controversies including but not limited to trivializing child sex trafficking,
the film did well enough for its writer-director Monteverde and co-writer Rod
Barr to reunite just a year later for another more user-friendly and broadly
appealing feature: a period-piece biopic based on the life and accomplishments
of Italian Catholic missionary Mother Francesca Xavier Cabrini in her mission
in the slums of New York City aptly named Cabrini.
An expensive and elongated period endeavor spoken of the
same breath as Fatima or Paul, Apostle of Christ, Cabrini follows
the Italian Mother played brilliantly by Cristiana Dell’Anna who despite ongoing
battles with lung disease and sexist rebuffs from her male colleagues in the
Vatican pushes ahead to found her own missionary. After visiting Pope Leo XIII (Giancarlo
Giannini) and Archbishop Corrigan (David Morse), her is granted with the help
of fellow Sisters to set up a missionary in New York City. Going as far as rooming in a brothel
incognito overnight to helping to establish a hospital for poor children,
Cabrini remains steadfast in her goals despite ongoing setbacks from a
mercenary Mayor Gould (John Lithgow) who will stop at nothing to thwart her
actions and maintain power over the city.
Running around 145 minutes, though Cabrini tends to
be a bit redundant and on the long side the film nevertheless succeeds in
conveying the late American Saint’s Mother Francesca Cabrini a strong yet
vulnerable and determined woman willing to fearlessly venture into the mouth of
Hell itself in the hopes she might pull an innocent child out of its bottomless
depths. Scenes of the titular Cabrini
venturing through an underground lair where children and adults lay in rot
waiting to die interspersed with scenes of her requests from the Vatican being
repeatedly denied with sexism aplenty dumped on her by her patriarchal
superiors tend to hit heavily and we find ourselves further identifying with
her personal as well as spiritual struggle.
An expensive production at about $50 million, the New York
and Rome based shoot lensed beautifully in 2.35:1 panoramic widescreen by Gorka
Gómez Andreu shows off all of the New York City slums in their ugly inglory, a
Hellscape shone upon with a ray of light emanating from the loving and selfless
Cabrini. The orchestral soundtrack by
Gene Back is fine if not unremarkable, ushering in the necessary emotional
power beats to further exemplify Cabrini’s ongoing uphill battles. The Italian cast interspersed with a few American
actors does a strong job in a film that’s largely subtitled though occasionally
Cristiana Dell’Anna drifts in and out of Italian or English sometimes
mid-sentence. She carries the film on
her shoulders and isn’t intimidated by the presence of veteran actors she
ultimately ends up going toe-to-toe with.
Despite underperforming at the box office, Cabrini was
a success with both critics and audiences as opposed to the director’s still-divisive
last picture and shows the faith-based company Angel Studios is getting read to
play ball in the big leagues. One of the
more scenic and set-piece heavy Christian financed films in recent memory
outside of Risen which is still the pinnacle of movies made with
faith-based money, Cabrini though on the long and at times repetitious
side has a good heart and strong message and points to America’s first
canonized saint in maybe the most complete testament to the late Mother’s life’s
work. While neither bold nor
spectacular, it means and does well enough onscreen for it to be taken seriously
as more than just another Christian financed movie.
--Andrew Kotwicki
