Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of three critical reviews which The Fatima Center is posting regarding the new Fatima movie released earlier this year. A round-table discussion video, with Fr. Rodríguez, will also be posted at our website and YouTube channel.
The unfortunate trend in recent years in Fatima-related literature has been like the steady accumulation of dross on the surface of a cooling cauldron of precious metal. I’m thinking of such scandals as “Calls” from the Message of Fatima and A Pathway under the Gaze of Mary, in which it becomes impossible to sort out true facts from new lies in an ongoing program of deception surrounding the all-important Message of Fatima. Now with the release of the 2020 Marco Pontecorvo movie, Fatima, the film industry has followed suit, adding insult to injury as it were, taking the artistic liberties of that genre to a new level until the whole subject is made to stand on its head in distortions which undo the Message and its story almost entirely.
A number of films have been made dramatizing the Fatima apparitions, the best of which in terms of authenticity is undoubtedly the 1992 Portuguese production, Apparitions at Fatima,[1] by Daniel Costelle, filmed on location at the actual sites of the apparitions with tremendous overall fidelity to the details of the events. The Portuguese title being simply Aparição (Apparition), this is the version which pilgrims to the Fatima Shrine will remember being shown there daily, dubbed in all major languages.
As something of a docu-drama it is well suited to such audiences (and more – if you want to introduce your family or friends to the story of Fatima through a movie, this is the one). However, it unfortunately cannot command the interest or attention of those who turn to movies primarily as entertainment, so it never achieved the popularity of Hollywood’s 1952 landmark production, The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima. But this latter’s wide audience came at the cost of all true substance, and what remained after forcing the chronicle and Message through Hollywood’s inflexible sieve of mainstream acceptability was a homogenized mess of sentimentality and dramatic license hardly worth one’s time.
Much more recently came the 2009 British production, The 13th Day, which truly has a lot of merit in spite of its many liberties, abbreviations, and omissions – all essentially justifiable given the task of reducing the whole matter to an hour-and-a-half’s time within a format palatable to movie-goers. But again, everything that makes the Message of Fatima truly crucial to our present situation – things that may be understood and appreciated only by Catholics – didn’t make the cut. The drama of the world’s crisis in 1917 and of the seers’ turmoil during the months of the apparitions is forcefully depicted, but scarcely a clue is given as to the relation of the Fatima revelations and requests to our present crises in the world and the Church.
And now there is Portecorvo’s Fatima on the list as well. I was initially excited to learn of a new high-budget movie being produced about the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima, but all hopes for a faithful, edifying, or useful presentation had been pretty well dashed even before its release in August 2020, as pre-release promotional material made clear the kind of limitations it would have. The Fatima Shrine was reported to have created an advisory team with whom the film-makers would consult throughout the production process in order to gain the Shrine’s official endorsement. The result would be “an artistic interpretation” in “a commercially viable film that could cross over into the mainstream.”[2] In other words, at best we could expect another draught of Fatima-Lite. But what we got was a real surprise, more like a worst-case scenario.
The opening scenes set the mood and demonstrate the mode of the film, in which there will be absolutely no effort to relate the true history of events and the supernatural will be strained through a filter of agnosticism (given voice throughout the movie by a fictionalized character, a skeptical professor / author).
In presenting one of the 1916 apparitions of the Angel of Peace, dramatic license completely obliterates the actual manner, context, and details of the event, worst of all in depicting St. Michael as a woman and butchering the Fatima prayer, “O my God, I believe, I adore….”
The main drama of the movie is constructed around psychological tensions supposedly caused in Lucia’s mind through a lack of affection from her mother, leading to an even more disturbing conflict within the child Lucia’s mind between her natural mother and the Blessed Virgin, the emotional scars of which are seen to persist even to Lucia’s adulthood. What a poor substitute this historically baseless drama is for what should have been the main plot of the movie – the story of the Fatima apparitions! Worse, it is all so completely foreign to and destructive of the clear accounts given in Sister Lucia’s Memoirs of her own pain and sympathy for her mother’s turmoil throughout those months leading up to the great miracle in October.
In the June apparition, this bizarre motif (already having compelled Lucia to disrespect and disobey her mother) is taken to the point of portraying her as arrogantly challenging and back-talking Our Lady Herself about having to stay on earth longer than Jacinta and Francisco. It is enough to make the viewer wonder if the point of the film is to honor or blaspheme Our Lady.
Each of the apparitions depicted is an utter disappointment, portrayed almost devoid of the many supernatural aspects of the actual events (e.g., Our Lady stands on the ground, wearing a sheer gown so non-luminous that her silhouette is indecently revealed). Her actual words – which should be the great focus and most edifying take-away from the film – are disastrously mangled beyond recognition or any semblance of fidelity to the known facts.
Liberties with the facts of the events continue non-stop, sometimes benignly, but more often at the expense of all religious credibility (e.g., the children engaging in crosstalk with the onlookers throughout the apparitions; Our Lady thanking the children for “praying for me”; Jacinta doubting Our Lady will come in October because of the weather; Our Lady saying, contrary to James 2:19, that some will never believe in God even when they face Him). As Dr. Brian McCall observed, “One could never fully anticipate how far this movie would push the limits of ‘artistic license’ at the expense of truth.”[3] And one can only ask: Why build a script on such constant inventions when the true story of Fatima is so moving, interesting, instructive, and edifying?
Possibly there are some good things that could be said about the movie, but to my mind all of its dramatic licenses and pointless departures from the plain truth of the events – especially the bizarre conflicting-mothers drama – preclude the only worthy purpose one could have for making or watching such a film. Far from being destined for anyone’s list of truly “Catholic” movies, it is in fact a dangerous half measure of piety requiring a strong caveat to would-be viewers.
I personally would not encourage anyone to watch it, and those who do should not allow themselves to be persuaded that they have learned anything of the true events of Fatima, much less of Our Lady’s Message and requests. For these, one simply has to turn to the trustworthy literature – the writings of Sister Lucia herself, Fr. António Martins, Fr. John de Marchi, Frère Michel, Frère François, William Thomas Walsh, Christopher Ferrara, Mark Fellows, and others associated with The Fatima Center.
[1] Reviewed here: http://www.decentfilms.com/reviews/apparitionsatfatima.
Watch at no cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-Sa9zUpTQk.
Purchase: https://www.ignatius.com/Product.aspx?ModelNumber=AAF-M
[2] https://www.ncregister.com/features/a-film-producer-encounters-fatima
[3] https://catholicfamilynews.com/blog/2020/10/13/fatima-the-movie-a-revisionist-tale/
READ OUR OTHER CRITICAL REVIEWS OF THIS MOVIE:
– Exposé of the Apparitions Depicted in the Movie, “Fatima” by Andrew Cesanek
– Why I don’t Recommend the New Fatima Movie (Part 1) by David Rodríguez
– A Modernist Movie About Fatima (Part 2) by David Rodríguez