Faith a test even for the religious

You believe or you don’t believe. And while there will always be believers – some true believers – there will also be doubters. And it’s no different now than it was in 1917. That’s when a series of apparitions of the Blessed Virgin appeared to three children in a sheep meadow in impoverished central Portugal. Of course, Catholics have long had a place in their hearts for “Our Lady of Fatima” and numerous churches have been named after the event, a theological miracle. But while all is taken for granted now and a huge shrine has been erected at the site, Fatima, the children’s sightings were highly controversial in their day and provoked huge disruptions in Portugal’s social and religious fabric. And all because few people – aka adults - believed the three little children. The film Fatima (Marco Pontecorvo) (opening in various Michigan theatres and on-demand Friday) puts us right in the middle of this fraught environment not just between the two girls and boy’s parents and their family’s neighbors. But it pits religion – and faith – against an increasingly secular world even in the early 20th century.  Early on in the film, the children witness the original Virgin apparition in May 1917 when World War I was still ongoing. Almost immediately the three children – Lucia (Stephanie Gil), the oldest, and her siblings Jacinta and Francisco – are scorned by their mother (Lúcia Moniz). “Why would the Mother of God choose you of all people?” Of course, since the kids actually saw the Virgin, attempts by their parents, the local priest and the town’s very secular mayor (Marco d’Almeida), can’t make them change their story. It all adds up to turmoil for the family, as they’re accused of harboring delinquent kids. And clergy and government officials are embarrassed their church and town are becoming laughing stocks. Eventually, word gets out and more and more people traipse to the sheep meadow. The children kneel before Virgin visions while those gathered behind of course can’t see anything. Nevertheless, one day a miracle is performed when a paralyzed boy starts walking. Lots of “rational” explanations are offered and why wouldn’t there be? Think how this kind of thing would go over nowadays. The disconnect between the children and adults eventually leads to cruelty as Lucia is temporarily jailed pending psychiatrist interview, who gives her a clean bill of mental health. The film’s narrative is a series of flashbacks from a more contemporary interview between an academic (Harvey Keitel) and a  now aged Lúcia dos Santos (Sônia Braga) a nun. (Lúcia died in 2005.) They two mildly spar. “What is faith if not the search for truth?” she asks. “An inexplicable truth which breeds irrational hope,” he replies. But even the professor can’t answer why Jacinta’s recently exhumed body is fully intact. And, to add credence to the Fatima story, hundreds of people have testified to the Oct. 13, 1917 “Miracle of the Sun” when the Virgin’s appearance seemed to trigger the celestial star's plummeting to the Earth. I liked the fact this film presents religion in a positive light against a typically condescending secular view. And it therefore should attract religious and especially Catholic audiences. However, I somehow wished the direction was less straightforward. For example, there could have been more use of surreal images – even magical realism – to show the juxtapositions between the children’s immersion in the spiritual or transcendent and the adults’ unimaginative, coarse every day.