People just want to live!

Cabrini (Italian/English, 2024)

Director: Alejandro Gómez Monteverde

After their exposè of transborder abduction of minors to satisfy the sexual needs of the deviant in 'Sound of Freedom' and hitting a runaway success at the box office, Angel Studio tries their hand at distributing a film that tries to highlight the bad treatment of early Italian immigrants at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century to the USA.

The expansion of white Americans southward and westward opened the door to an influx of economic immigrants from Europe. The potato famine sent the Irish there, and abject poverty brought Italians and Jews to escape persecution. There was plenty of menial work to be done that the locals found too dirty, dangerous and demeaning to do. Immigrants filled the gap willingly. The Americans were not welcoming of them, however. Shoving them to the most unflattering part of New York, infested with rats, crime and disease, they had to live like rats. Healthcare was poor, social amenities were dismal, pimping was rampant and in short, there was general lawlessness.

Against this background, a troublemaker Roman Catholic nun was sent to care for the poor Italian migrants in New York. The nun, Frances Maria Cabrini, and her sisters arrive in New York and find themselves in the dirty streets of Point Five. Amidst the non-cooperation of the Diocese and the Mayor, Cabrini, with her fighting spirit, despite her failing health due to past TB, starts an orphanage. The powers that be were not so excited that a woman could do so much and for, in their eyes, vermins of society. She got eviction notices and fines from the city council.

Through the help of the press, she acquired donations to purchase a piece of property, which she turned into an orphanage. She and her team soon set up a private hospital to earn money to subside the poor immigrants. Her chain of hospitals grew and had many branches worldwide.

There is a lesson for us all to learn. Recently, many videos have emerged on social media of self-appointed vigilantès who pounce on foreigners in Malaysia who set up shops, ride around without valid driving licences, or extend their premises illegally. These foreigners comprise refugees with UNHCR cards, foreign workers who overstayed their visas, and runaway workers.

Vigilantes showing foreign businesses

In the video, the vloggers quickly pass disparaging remarks about their living conditions and choice of food. In the vigilantes' eyes, the guest workers should be subservient to the locals, not independent, earning lots of money, perhaps more than the locals. The vloggers would feel unhappy that the guests bring their cultures and practices into the country, akin to polluting the Malaysian culture (sic.)

The vloggers should hear themselves speak. It sounds so ridiculous. A person in the prime of his (or her) youth is bound to have surmount of plans for his future. He would want to be a notch higher than his parents, maybe two. The desire of the human mind has no boundaries. Wealth is often used as the yardstick of success. If one does not seek wealth in his youth, when else? If his living conditions in his country are not conducive, the only logical thing to do, as generations before us did, is to migrate, looking for safer and greener pastures. The immigrants are there to do work that the locals feel is beneath them, which is demeaning and a side effect of the prospering society.

Aren't we all, the citizens of the world, all migrants, anyway? From the first hominid who walked out of the Savanah for food, we are all emigres. Some flee from famine, others for opportunities, and to escape persecution, we move. The world is for everyone. Borders are artificial demarcations, not cast in stone but in our minds.

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At 6am, 6th June!

The First Omen (2024)
Director: Arkasha Robertson

Recently, I heard about a mysterious case of a missing teenager in Rome, Italy. She was 16 in 1983 when she was allegedly abducted. Her father was an administrative staff member in Vatican City. 40 years into her disappearance, the Italian Police never found her. Along the way, there were allegations of abduction by international terrorists, murder by serial killers and many more. Pope John Paul II was also heard to have appealed to the perpetrators to no avail. The Holy See was not spared of accusations. Conspiracy Theorists accused a convoluted union of the mob and the Papacy, a collusion between the Italian Police and the Vatican, as well as the possibility of an unmarked grave in the Vatican.

It is not the best of times for the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). At a time when many from the developed world had strayed away from Catholicism, stories of deviance and malfeasance spread quickly like wildflowers. 

This movie is set at a time when the RCC was losing its fervour. In 1971, a young nun-in-making, Margaret Daino, arrives in Rome to work in an orphanage. Margaret observes many strange things happening in the place. Many odd characters, such as senior clergy, use unconventional methods to run the institution. Margaret herself had a checkered past as a young American, moving from foster homes to foster homes and having visual hallucinations. 

Margaret discovers that certain clergy members tried to reignite people's attraction to Christianity. How they chose to do it was twisted. They invoked Satan to be born as an anti-Christ here on Earth to create mayhem so that people would once again go to the Church and God for help. Little does Margaret know she was the vessel to bear this devilish child.

The movie is actually the prequel to the 1976 blockbuster The Omen, which told the story of the US Ambassador's wife who delivered a stillbirth. A baby boy was swapped in the place of the stillbirth without the knowledge of the mother. The swapped baby turned out to be the anti-Christ. The child, Damian, went on a killing spree, killing his parents, abetted by his disguised nanny.

In terms of horror and suspense, the 1976 version is far superior to the latest offering from the Omen franchise. Despite what IMDB may say about 'The Omen' being banned in Malaysia, I distinctly remember seeing its posters around Penang in my teenage years. 

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Engage, disengage or disappear!

Omphaloskepsis!
(Omphalo = umbilicus,
skepsis = act of looking)

Just how often have we seen people who appear almost in a stuporous state, unarousable by external stimuli? Viewed from this side of the table, it may look like he is self-absorbed or awestruck at the sight of his own genitalia. A clinician may diagnose him to have narcolepsy. In Western Africa, the doctor may give him the spot diagnosis of Trypanosomiasis @ Sleeping Sickness.

A man of the clergy would assume that he is engaged in sincere prayers, engaging with a plea with his Maker bargaining so that everything will be alright. Of course, the correct explanation is none of the above. He is merely immersed in his own digital devices. Being in an almost trance-like state, he insists that very much in touch with the present and that his generation excels in multitasking, something alien to my kind, he asserts.

Navel-gazing?
© Amethyst Aziezéé

A few years ago, a series of pictures used to appear on people's social media pages showing off their pictures of their perfect life as they lie whaling on the beach or sunbathing by the pool. The view is as if they are lying down gazing at navel level. These self-absorbed acts, called navel-gazing, are mere pursuits to ruin the media consumer's day.

Actually, the original word 'navel-gazing' has its origin way back during the time of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The monks in a Greek monastery were described in an 1830 publication jocularly as "...pretended or fancied that they experienced celestial joys when gazing on their umbilical region, in converse with the Deity". Many traditional practices like yoga and qigong use the umbilicus as an energy point to rejuvenate the hidden powers of the body.

The men of God thought that our God-given senses were the ones that get us into trouble most of the time. Our eyes give us evil thoughts; so do our auditory, smell, touch and taste. Hence, they thought that by looking away from stimuli, 'the windows to the soul' can be protected. 

Modern men use it as an excuse not to interact with strangers. Those with an inferiority complex, sociophobia or extreme introvert use navel-gazing (read digital device fixation) as an outlet to keep aloof from the surroundings. He can opt to engage, disengage or disappear with their digital friends. Interacting with a person in the flesh is more cumbersome; the cursory greetings, the niceties, the eye contact, the physical contact and the small talk - too time-consuming!

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The reluctant Man of God?

Grantchester (TV series, Season 1, 2; 2014)


An interesting depiction of a Man of God who seems more like a sceptic. He realises that every action that one does has two ways of looking at it. There are no clear-cut answers to all the queries of life. He sometimes even wonders  whether he could just give a straight answer to anything. At times, his belief is also shaken.

Reverend Sidney Chalmers is a vicar of a small church in a town adjacent to Cambridge. The young clergyman teams up with a policeman in this town to solve many of the murders that seem to be popping up very so often.

Between solving crimes and handling the church matters, Rev Chalmers has to deal with many of his inner demons. There is an unending saga of unrequited love between him and an old flame who is soon to be and later marries off to a man of her family’s choice.

The widow of the murdered that he solves in the first episode is romantically linked to the hero. Even this does not work out after he confesses to the lady of a weak moment when he succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh when he was drunk. Yes, our holy man drinks like a fish! He finds too many common grounds with whisky drinking buddy and comrade in solving crimes, the local police detective, Geordie.

The cast is made colourful with the inclusion of an assistant gay priest and a caretaker who speaks of her mind. The series is set in the early 1950s with a backdrop of jazz music and the slow-paced English countryside.

A recurring theme that emerges in the story is that of his past vocation, as a British officer in World War 2 and the brutal killings and injuries of his subordinates.

Most of the episodes end with excerpts of his weekly sermon at the pulpit. Like the reading of a tarot reader or a newspaper horoscope columnist, his speech seems to make a lot of sense to all the characters in their own way.