The Secret Scripture (2016)

I didn't really know about this film but of course I'll watch anything with Rooney Mara in it no matter what. I absolutely love her, think she's still underrated and think she's absolutely gorgeous. You do have to be cautious about directors whose work hasn't really resonated well in the past so I wasn't expecting something truly great from Jim Sheridan. The minimum of my requirements was to enjoy Rooney Mara and solely in that aspect it met my expectations. 

The Secret Scripture is based on the novel of the same name and is about a girl named Rose (played by Rooney Mara) and her young life in which she has a few suitable men interested in her. The film chronicles her love life and the turmoil that follows with it. It also details her mental health problems and her hospitalization which changes her life in unimaginable ways. The film follows an older Rose (Vanessa Redgrave) and is told through her written diary entries. 

This film isn't very good. I did read that book readers were extremely disappointed by this film either through its adaptation or through changing key points of the plot. The film drudges along and never looks to fully realize its purpose. I think the lead actors's chemistry was off and the script really let the actors down (possibly from not being good enough).  Maybe I am biased because I love Mara but I think she did really well in the film and gave a full effort. You could sense the bewilderment in her character when she got locked into the mental institution.

Overall, no harm done with this one. I didn't really know about it or have any hopes. Bare minimum was that I wanted to see Rooney Mara do well and she does. The film just isn't interesting has a lot of questions and is structured in a careless manner. Nothing to really see here. I'll just look forward to seeing Mara as Mary Magdeline later this year instead.

6/10

Fmovies: I came upon this movie by accident, I had never heard of this movie so I looked it up and read some of the reviews and a lot of them were excellent and some were not so good so I decided to watch it and give it a chance. This movie was so touching. I could totally see this happening back then when the story line had taking place. I cried at the end of the movie. It touched my heart. I would totally suggest you watch it.

What a great movie.

If you liked The Notebook and know a bit about the conflict between the Republic of Ireland and Britain, it's a must see.

Terrific cast - Vanessa Redgrave (Call the Midwife), Eric Bana, Theo James (Divergent), Aidan Turner (Poldark), Rooney Mara (Lion), Adrian Dunbar (Line Of Duty), Jack Reynor - very fitting music and very emotional.

There were a couple of times when I wished documents had stayed on the screen slightly longer so that I could have read the contents but that won't be a problem when the Blu-ray and DVD come out, which I'll definitely be adding to my collection.

The Secret Scripture fmovies. This is a surprise film. Almost my favourite. Because I don't know when the last time I wetted my eyes. I'm not ashamed to say that I love sentimental films. This was not like a thorough tearjerker, but it gets there at some point. It was like I have been waiting for such film a very long time, so that I ended up liking it more than I was anticipating.

An Irish-English language film with a wonderful cast. Because of those actors I have watched it, despite it was not promoted big like the Hollywood films. It's not in the mainstream films list. That's why not many people do not know about this film. Rooney Mara's one of the best performances. The remaining cast too had big roles, but was not powerful as hers.

Films has genres, books has genres, but not all of those works converted to each other form works out. This is such a rare genre where both formats triumphs. Watching this film is almost as experience of reading the book. You know those literatures explaining the events, character deeply, emotionally, that's quite matching in this film with beautiful locations and nice background score.

The suspense kept me expecting every moment of my watch. The end twist was not that difficult, but not all the viewers can predict it easily. It is a tale from the first half of the 20th century. But most of it was split into early and the later events. Overwhelmed by the flashback, the film reveals an old and a last woman in a mental asylum to evacuate the building to a new location. So those last moments of her stay in there, she explains why she's refusing to leave.

-xX] There's a sickness in people that stops them seeing the truth. [Xx-

A doctor from another place is now reviewing her case, has to go through her story to understand the situation and act accordingly, that's accompanied by a nurse. So she reveals her secret romance when she was young, when the whole town turned against her. Particularly a young priest. How she had ended up in the mental hospital, and after 40 years, now denying to leave the building. The story ends emotionally.

The film was like the mix of 'The Little Prince' and 'Neverwas'. Because the reality and the other way around were nicely put together. Only it all were told from the grown up's perspective. They are showing something means does not you have to believe it. So it all comes to the final twist, how it ends by revealing what. No doubt if it resembles someone's real life, perhaps in the past, because in the earlier centuries, such fate, particularly for women is so common. That's where it's heart-wrenching.

A perfect title for what it narrated. The older version of the lead role was too well performed. The romance part was short, but mystery extended till the final scene. Overall, the focus given to what to narrate and what not were nicely done. A very satisfying film, glad that I saw it.

I don't know everybody would like it as much I did, but surely worth a try. Since the story was told from a woman's point of view about her struggle in the men dominated world, they might like it better than others. Because, as I know in the recent, the women's empowerment rising to equal men than never before. All I say is, just watch it!

8.5/10

It's easy to get absorbed in a story without recognising the bigger picture that frames the narrative. To describe The Secret Scripture (2017) as a woman's diary of life in a mental hospital masks the darker narrative of horror perpetrated by the Catholic Church. Based on a 2008 novel of the same name, the film is part of the recent wave of disclosures about appalling misdeeds committed in the name of holiness across various parts of the world.

Set in Ireland from the early 1930s, the story traces the life of Roseanne McNulty who was falsely incarcerated in an Irish mental hospital owned by the Catholic Church. After more than 40 years as a patient, Rose must be discharged or moved elsewhere when the hospital closes. New psychiatrist William Grene (Eric Bana) discovers that she is mentally sharp and has meticulously recorded her life story across the pages of an old bible. In a complex series of flashbacks the elderly Rose (Vanessa Redgrave) recounts how, as a feisty young woman (played by Rooney Mara), she had fallen in love with Michael McNulty (Jack Reynor) believed by locals to be a British sympathiser. The new Father Gaunt (Theo James) takes more than a pastoral interest in Rose and tries to stop the affair. When Rose becomes pregnant and Michael is embroiled in the Irish Troubles, she is hunted down by local vigilantes for harbouring the suspected sympathiser. Enraged by the affair, Father Gaunt certifies her to be suffering from nymphomania and she is subjected to electric shock treatment and other abuses over four decades.

Great filming locations and stellar acting performances by Redgrave and Mara do little to save this film from its complicated and fractured web of episodic flashbacks. The constant shifts of time, place, and people is at the cost of narrative coherence and the contrived finale defies beiief. The narrow expressive repertoire of Eric Bana casts a pall of indifference over Rose's existence as if she were a specimen in a hospital test tube. When it is revealed she is much more than that, Bana strains to emote with warmth or empathy and leaves you wondering why he was cast in that role. The transitions between the younger and older Rose are increasingly disjointed as the entire ensemble drifts towards its soap-operatic conclusion.

Uncertain direction and messy narrative means it is easy to lose sight of the larger story of injustice suffered by people like Rose at the hands of the Catholic Church. The moral perversion of Father Gaunt and the Church's obsession to punish victims is left unexamined. Despite excellent filming and a well-crafted atmosphere of claustrophobic confinement, this film struggles to rise above a mediocre melodrama.

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An intriguing story, great acting, some things could have surely been better, but overall it's more than just a good movie, much better than one could tell from it's imdb 6.7 rating