Considering the impact the arts can have on the spirituality of a
society, I personally am thrilled that out of 113 movies showing
last weekend Therese came in 20th. This is per the Yahoo movies
page box office section.
It gets better. "Vanity Fair," which came in 22nd, made $317,000,
but it showed on 317 screens, whereas Therese only showed on 32
screens and took in $357,000. This looks pretty respectable to me.
I hope the Catholic people will take heart from these numbers and
promote this film to the max. It has real box office possibilities.
I'll admit to being saddened by comments made to the effect that the
film was overly sentimental and saccharine. To me this seems
grossly unfair for two reasons. First of all, this isn't a bio of Al
Capone, after all. No car chases, no shoot'em ups, no bar room
brawls or fistfights. No explosions. Nor were there any of the
typical teenage tantrum scenes. No real quarrels. No shouting.
No "partial nudity" or "sexual situations" so common on the screen
today. Everything was very sedate, for this was after all the home
of Mr. and Mrs. Martin, one of those saintly couples for whom we
wish canonization, do we not. They knew how to keep a prayerful,
peaceful, joyful home. And they knew how to form saintly, loving
daughters. So if we wish to quarrel with anyone, it should be with
them, and not with the screen writer. After all, Mrs. Defillipis
could only work with what the Martin family actually presented her,
a peaceful, loving, thoroughly Catholic family. This is bad?
As for sentimentality, we are not the bourgoisie of 19th century
France and probably have no concept how sentimental they actually
were- even having seen the movie, we who think that we are being
extremely florid when we write, "Dear Bill", cross it out and
write, "Hi Bill," and finally cross *that* out and write, "Bill..."
The entire age was sentimental, and probably nowhere moreso than in
France. Recently I purchased at a used book sale a book
commemorating the 25th anniversary of the episcopacy of Archbishop
Feehan of Chicago in 1890. Let me give you one sentence out of
thousands in this book to give some glimpse of the tenor of the
age. This is Bishop Hogan of Kansas City addressing the
congregation at Holy Name Cathedral. Referring to Archbishop Feehan
he said, " Years ago, far away and beyond the misty ocean, in a
country sanctified for ages by the faith of an apostle {He means St.
Patrick, of course}, there knelt before the sacred altar, on the day
of his first communion, a youth whose soul, filled with the deep
emotion inspired by that hour, breathed in solemn prayer the words
of Holy Writ, "What shall I render unto the Lord for all that he has
rendered unto me...."
A bishop saying anything of the kind in our age would cause
unbounded hilarity in the newsrooms, rectories and barooms of the
city, to say nothing of the cathedral itself. So much the worse for
us!
Nevertheless, I knew the film was in trouble when Mr. Martin called
Therese, "My queen." "This isn't going to fly, " I thought to
myself. Nevertheless, that is what he did call her, whether we have
trouble stomaching it or not. And it may very well have been part of
the brew that so wonderfully nourished the heart of Therese Martin
and made her a saint.
At least let us do the Defillipises the courtesy of not insisting
that their film be anachronistic and frame the whole story in terms
of our emotional and spiritual impoverishment. Viewing that film is
probably as close as we can get to being in the bosom of that family
in those years, the English language excepted of course, just as
viewing "The Passion of Christ" put us on the scene in Jerusalem.
These are both exceptionally well done, and I for one plan to go
again and again till "Therese" goes away. We cannot change the
culture without changing the art, and we cannot get good films on
Catholic themes by adopting an attitude of hypercriticism toward the
few films that come our way. If we support Leonardo Defillipis
today, he will be in a position to produce a better effort
tomorrow. If it isn't up to your mark, at least concede it is a
first film, and possibly the first of a large, influential and
impressive body of work...if we support these fledgling efforts
today.
Rivers of vocations can come from such work, the conversions of many
families, the reform of their homes and etc. The lives of the
saints are powerful enough to do all this and more.
As long as it's playing still! So i'm hoping it will. 
