Cabrini
Cabrini (2024)
Made by the same studio that made Sound of Freedom, this film takes a look at the life of St. Frances Cabrini, the first canonized American saint in the Catholic Church. On it’s own, it’s an ok movie, with some good but a lot that was very average. As far as a centering around a religious figure, they tried to remove all of the religion associated with the real life person. This was not good in general, and this could’ve been better.
The lead actress, Cristiana Dell’Anna, did an excellent job as Cabrini, which was the highlight of the whole movie. There was also John Lithgow who was fine, but the rest weren’t thrilling in this and not much to speak of.
Story and writing by themselves were fine, but it could’ve been a lot better. There was some character development, but not enough to warrant it as a positive. What happened with the other nuns? There were good spots for the two boys, but it felt too short for them. The prostitute felt like an unnecessary character. The ending was abrupt, and felt very weird, even though the movie ran for 20 minutes long at minimum. Pacing was slightly off. There were some feminist moments, especially when it came to the men in the Catholic Church. They were seen as misogynistic idiots, and Cabrini seemed very disrespectful toward them, as they were easy to knock down. Removing almost entirely the faith of the person that was a huge core of the real-life character was also a terrible move.
This is a rare time when the soundtrack took away from the experience. They had a sort of theme choir track running throughout the movie, which had two problems. First, it wasn’t a Gregorian chant choir which nuns sing. That would’ve been nice. Second, it was used in all the wrong spots and not in the correct ones. One scene fit but the rest felt out of place. There was also a volume issue, where the volume seemed too loud and it distracted from the movie. The only saving grace for this was the end track of the movie with Andrea Bocelli and his daughter Virginia Bocelli (who also acted in the film).
This film will probably not be revisited. Can you watch it again? Yes, it’s not an entire dumpster fire of a movie. There are some things it did well. But as a Catholic, this is not one to watch, as they removed the core aspect of a real-life character, which was religion.