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Spiritual Movies
Letter P
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Patch
Adams. |
Staving off suicidal thoughts, Hunter Adams commits himself into a psychiatric ward, where he not only garners the nickname "Patch," but learns the joy in helping others. To this end, he decides to go to medical school, where he clashes with the staid conventions of the establishment as he attempts to inject humor and humanity into his treatment of the patients ("We need to start treating the patient as well as the disease," he declares throughout the film). Robin Williams, in the title role, is as charming as ever. |
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Ponette. |
Fresh, attentive, and emotionally shattering, the French film Ponette is an attempt to enter the world of a 4-year-old girl whose mother has just been killed in a car accident on one of the winding roads in the mountainous countryside near Lyon. Played by pudgy, sad-eyed Victoire Thivisol (winner of a controversial but perfectly understandable Best Actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival), Ponette turns her grief into something else, something more childish and yet more mature. Convinced that her mother has been visiting her in her dreams, and that some day she will return in flesh and blood, Ponette invents a religion for herself with the specter of her mother at its center. |
| Pray, Hope and Don't Worry: Padre Pio. | |
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[more to come]
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