Ugh. Couldn’t you just point me to the museum display? While Cabrini is neither a bad film, nor a bad subject, it comes off as so heavy-handed and self-righteous that one longs for a pre-Gandhi era of film where the deeds of an uncomplicated personal force of good could be conveyed in under two hours.
What to know what Cabrini feels like? It feels like the first match for a high school debate team. The team has done hours and hours and hours of research; it knows the subject back and forth, but the research team has never debated before and isn’t quite sure it knows which arguments are stronger than the others, so it lays them all down in shaming fashion. That is what Cabrini feels like.
After being diagnosed with a fatal lung disease, Italian Mother Francesca Cabrini (Cristiana Dell’Anna) decides she ain’t goin’ quietly into that good night. There’s shit to be done, caspisce? And she ain’t wastin’ no more time. So she visits the Pope a bunch, cuz why not? Pope Leo XIII eventually said, “Sure, babe. Go do your missionary thing; but don’t go East, go West.” So Mother Cabrini took her Sister Act to the Five Points neighborhood of Manhattan, where, apparently, every pre-WWII NYC tale happened.
I’m not sure of the timeline of either this film or Godfather Part II, but it was easy to see the two mesh together in the same universe. Mother Cabrini focused on the welfare of the impoverished Italian community. The latter had taken to wheelbarrow typhus and secret sewer orphanages. That’s kind of the way New Yorkers wanted it. If nothing else, we have to thank Mother Cabrini for getting the orphans out of the NYC sewers so that the Ninja Turtles could move in.
So, this is quite a tale when one really considers it – a Italian nun dying of lung disease comes to late 19th century Manhattan and -without money or resources or support- founds an orphanage 
empire. It’s hard to root against that. And it’s equally hard to remember that this is the stuff that the church ought to be promoting at the time. Of course they were not. Finding Christians who would be on Mother Cabrini’s side even now seems like a big deal. The film goes out of its way to set up a rivalry between Cabrini and Archbishop Corrigan (David Morse).
I cannot deny this is compelling stuff. The problem is that every conversation in the film feels like this (taken directly from the film):
“The hospital is going to close down …”
“But we NEED that hospital!”
That is some challenging dialogue. The result is a nun who comes off scarier than The Nun, but. overall. a story that’s not as good as the story, ifyouknowwhatI’msayin’.
Cabrini is a noble work made with the best intentions. Immigration issues have consistently been a lightning rod issue in the history of the United States, and it’s important for all Americans to understand that one day it was the Irish, the next Italians, the next Chinese, and we’re currently on a Mexican boogeyman. Immigration makes us stronger; you WANT to be a country people flock to, not flee from. Sure, there are mistakes. Mother Cabrini’s championing of Italian-Americans would eventually lead to Mayor Rudy Giuliani :shudder:. I wish I liked the film better. Despite the subject matter and self-righteousness, Cabrini doesn’t come off as Godsquad. It also, unfortunately, doesn’t come off as taut, either, which is a bit of an editing gaffe for such a one-dimensional film.
There once was a nun named Cabrini
Who had lungs solid as overcooked linguini
Yet she took her disease
With curious ease
And became the city’s new Italian genie
Rated PG-13, 142 Minutes
Director: Alejandro Monteverde
Writer: Rod Barr, Alejandro Monteverde
Genre: Back in black
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who have fond memories of The Song of Bernadette
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “Wow, is this heavy-handed”
