I don't know if I believe in heaven or hell, but if there's a heaven Theresa of Calcutta is as surely there as Hitchens would be if there was a hell, if for nothing else, the sheer lousiness of this film.
And I am not saying it's lousy merely for the content, which is a full frontal assault on a person who spent her entire life working for the poorest of people. It's lousy not only for what it attempts to do - for the clearly stated anti-religious bias of the film maker - but it's lousy in how it does it too, presenting one-sided views of the most anti-Christian interpretation of everything she did, without giving a voice to any others.
SPOILER ALERT: --------------- An example is the "exposure of Theresa's hypocrisy" regarding her own health care. The fact is the poorest of poor in India do not have health care, and the government regulations during the life of Theresa prevented them from receiving pain killers anyway. Those regulations were only loosened in 2012. But this is completely ignored by the film maker, as would be expected in a hatchet job. Mother Theresa, in contrast, had the basic health care insurance that every Catholic nun/priest has, and as a European citizen had access to it, even though she had to leave India to receive it. And that's where the rubber meets the road - as a Catholic it was her religious duty to take the health care, refusing it would have been suicidal, which was itself a sin. -----------------
The film would have been better had it taken into consideration the impact of her beliefs and Catholic doctrine on everything she did, as well as the political situation of the poor in India.
As it was it's just a hit job with gaping holes, and it screams out to even non-Catholic Christians as a really, really, really low-shot. There's plenty of fodder to attack the Roman Catholics without taking pot shots at people who are doing the services nobody else cares to do.
I'll give it 3 stars for continuity and editing. It was better made than most pieces of this type.
And I am not saying it's lousy merely for the content, which is a full frontal assault on a person who spent her entire life working for the poorest of people. It's lousy not only for what it attempts to do - for the clearly stated anti-religious bias of the film maker - but it's lousy in how it does it too, presenting one-sided views of the most anti-Christian interpretation of everything she did, without giving a voice to any others.
SPOILER ALERT: --------------- An example is the "exposure of Theresa's hypocrisy" regarding her own health care. The fact is the poorest of poor in India do not have health care, and the government regulations during the life of Theresa prevented them from receiving pain killers anyway. Those regulations were only loosened in 2012. But this is completely ignored by the film maker, as would be expected in a hatchet job. Mother Theresa, in contrast, had the basic health care insurance that every Catholic nun/priest has, and as a European citizen had access to it, even though she had to leave India to receive it. And that's where the rubber meets the road - as a Catholic it was her religious duty to take the health care, refusing it would have been suicidal, which was itself a sin. -----------------
The film would have been better had it taken into consideration the impact of her beliefs and Catholic doctrine on everything she did, as well as the political situation of the poor in India.
As it was it's just a hit job with gaping holes, and it screams out to even non-Catholic Christians as a really, really, really low-shot. There's plenty of fodder to attack the Roman Catholics without taking pot shots at people who are doing the services nobody else cares to do.
I'll give it 3 stars for continuity and editing. It was better made than most pieces of this type.