Review of Lourdes

Lourdes (2000 TV Movie)
3/10
simple faith
13 August 2005
Warning: Spoilers
(Saint) Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes story is absolutely fascinating : how this poor little girl (her father was in jail) from a lost city in the Pyrenees managed to build the first french place of tourism after Paris ?! Well the movie doesn't say a lot, and the script is obviously written by people who didn't want to stick to the facts and nothing less... A three levels story (Bernadette's Story, a Science man's and, one hundred and fifty years later, his grand-grand-grand son) tries to make us believe that after all, "science doesn't explain everything" and that people who don't believe in miracles have the more irrational faith (they can't accept what they see). The facts are shown as "close to the real story" but it is not true at all. The intervention of JM Charcot is for instance a total anachronism, and not even close to what Charcot wrote in his essay about Lourdes. The acting is OK, the main role has the good face but plays Bernadette in the more candid way possible. Well the photographs of these times and the testimonies from her pals in convent shows she was not only that, she was also a strong temper, with authority, who liked to lead the others for instance. Well, here's what I'd say : the times are not well rendered and they are anachronic (about the science men beliefs for instance), the family's misery is not shown, the "miracles" shown are not the ones that happened (or were considered to) - for instance the first miracle of Lourdes happened to a friend of Bernadette who's arm was out (déboité in french... don't know in English) who putted it in the water and then had her bones put together again... In the movie it is a blind guy who recovers sight even if the medicine see his eye as dead ! The movie is in two parts. The first is bad, the second is bad too, but also terribly boring. Well I won't say it's worth seeing.
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