Millions

I watched Millions tonight after my root canal, having gotten it from the libary when Renee recommended it during a conversation about my trip to Lourdes and our mutual fascination with apparitions of the Virgin Mary and assorted other saints. Early on Millions had hints of cute-orphan-kid-life-lessons, but then it got weird and terrific and transcended that. Scary, really funny, true about grief and loss, and our Virgin Mother isn't in it but Joseph is, as well as Saints Anne, Nick, Peter, Clare, Ambrosio, Francis (of Assisi), and assorted martyrs. Plus our hero is in a "Nativity Play" (since the movie is charming and Irish--if it were American, he'd be in a Christmas pageant).

Huge plot elements also happen to be structured around the change from pounds to Euros.* It's a movie so much about money, and greed, and this could be as trite as cute-orphan-kid, but the closing scene manages to be one of the funniest white-people-bringing-hope-to-the-poor-people-of-Africa moments EVER. Maybe the only [intentionally] funny white-people-bringing-hope-to-the-poor-people-of-Africa moment ever? Probably not. But it is the perfect way to end the film, in large part because if it had ended with me weeping over orphan kid's dead mother, I would not have loved it nearly so much.





*Rana and I were actually in Ireland when that happened, randomly.