This documentary makes a fascinating companion piece to Stephen Bradley’s excellent biopic Noble, released last year. What a pity the two films aren’t being shown together in cinemas, since moving between one and the other would provide a useful lesson in the differences between documentary and drama, and the separate strengths of each.
Documentary director Ciarín Scott presents a raw and raging Christina Noble, who conveys the story of her life with deeply affecting power. It has the messy character of a therapy session, but that is part of its appeal. Noble is a force of nature, highly emotional but rarely vulnerable — it is an unusual instance of extreme emotionalism being a source of power and strength rather than a weakness. In the intensity of her feelings you can see how she rode roughshod over bureaucracies, through indifference and red tape, to create children’s charities in Vietnam and Mongolia.
Scott has chosen not to swaddle her subject in any sort of public relations comfort blanket. Hence Noble is seen cursing; effing and blinding all about her. Like her compatriot and fellow campaigner Bob Geldof, who is also fond of using Anglo-Saxon expletives, she has not been smoothed out or veneered over. There is also something of the showman about Noble. She can sing to a crowded fundraising gala in a glittery jacket with sparkly earrings and shiny belt buckle, and she can command a roomful of workers or volunteers when giving a pep talk. And yet she seems happiest kicking a football about with a little kid. Hyperactive and full of energy, you can easily see the strength of her internal power source.
The documentary is carefully shaped around a planned reunion between Christina, her sisters Kathy and Philomena and her brother Sean. Their mother died in the 1950s when the children were all under 10, and their hopelessly alcoholic father was unable to cope so they were taken into care. Christina and Philomena were literally pulled apart, the younger child screaming: “Mammy, mammy, mammy.” Christina’s subsequent career as a children’s charity worker and campaigner has been an attempt to redress this moment in her youth.
Christina was sent to St Joseph’s in Clifden, Sean to the notorious Letterfrack industrial school, both in Co Galway.
Advertisement
The two younger girls went to an orphanage in Booterstown, Co Dublin. Sean persuaded one of the Christian Brothers to take him on a trip to Clifden to seek out his sister, only to be told that Christina was dead.
The documentary visits both institutions, showing the interior of an abandoned and ruined St Joseph’s with childish murals on the crumbling walls. Probably the most terrible moment of the film is when Christina sings a mildly sexy blues song in the wreckage of the interior.
Her mother’s deathbed instruction to Christina was to take care of the little ones. “I was their mother for a while,” she says, standing outside the orphanage in Booterstown. Then her composure crumbles and she shouts: “They f***** up my sisters.”
Afterwards she has to go for a walk to calm down, and lights up a cigarette.
In last year’s biopic starring Deirdre O’Kane, by contrast, Christina declines the offer of a cigarette, and says: “I gave up.” This treatment of smoking illustrates the differences between the two approaches; the documentary creates a space for a human and weak Christina, whereas the biopic created a hero for a drama.
Advertisement
The siblings now live in Canada, Britain and America, and the planned reunion would be the first time in 53 years they were all in the same room. Kathy is dark and Philomena is fair, but facially they both resemble their older sister, while being more sedate and ladylike in manner. Though none of the siblings is as unbuttoned as Christina, there is a constant emotional undercurrent, its potency undimmed by their restraint.
You can feel the hurt all four of them feel about their homeland. Significantly, they do not want their reunion to occur in Ireland. Philomena says: “It’s really important that Ireland is missing.” Kathy agrees, saying: “The state knew what was going on.” So instead the reunion is scheduled for Sean’s home in Texas, though his bookshelves are lined with Irish titles, including works by Oscar Wilde.
Viewing this powerful documentary here in Dublin, it is difficult to avoid a sense of national shame.