Hollywood’s gonna find out they’re asleep at the wheel. Faith based movies for a long time were ignored/laughed at for being amateur movie productions with blacklisted or honestly bad actors buoying movies designed to pander to religious audiences. As Ghandi said though, first they ignore you, then they laugh, at you, then they fight you, then you win. Audrey’s Children inches us closer to that fight that’s gonna happen soon, and if Dr. Audrey Evans is any indication, the winning will start to come soon after as more and more quality writers/directors will be inspired to tell more faith based stories.
Dr. Audrey Evans (Natalie Dormer) was not a name I was familiar with. British born, her major work was at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, or CHOP. As a children’s oncologist, Evans’s never ending energy shined a light for those unbearably sad places, for both the child patients and their parents. At the time, neuroblastoma was responsible for killing 90% of the kids, and she makes her life’s work to get that number down by revolutionizing treatment. Some members of the team like Dr. Dan D’Angio (Jimmi Simpson) or resident Brian Faust (Brandon Micheal Hall) happily follow her lead, but others like Dr. Jeremy Lewis (Ben Chase) and head of the doctors C. Everett Coop (Clancy Brown) are either railing against her or mixed, because of how many rules Audrey bends/breaks in order to get her goals.
Director Ami Canaan Mann gives us something we haven’t seen before for most faith based films: real cinematography. Most films like Audrey’s Children you can tell are either shot inside on cheap sets, or some of the cheapest looking sound stages you’ll ever see. I was fortunate to visit Philadelphia recently, and was SHOCKED to see places I had actually been, not just recreations. There are shockingly pretty rooftop scenes and a great scene wandering through City Hall at night, looking out at Market Street and some of Philadelphia’s beautiful skyline. The sound mixing could be a little better, but the extra money goes a long way to give Audrey’s story the baseline competence it needs for such an important figure in society.
How important exactly? Well Game of Thrones’s Natalie Dormer gives it her all to show you. Evans’s two biggest accomplishments I won’t spoil, but you’ll definitely recognize them as they show up. Dormer takes that drive to help kids and takes the generic “crusading hero” archetype and makes her at least more layered than just a great person. The story helps Dormer out too, taking really welcome surprising turns I didn’t expect it to. You’d probably think this film is a pseudo sports movie right, with Audrey beset on all sides by challenges she has to rise above outside the rule. Well she does do those things, but her narrow minded mission at one point costs the hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars and another delays real progress from being made on child’s oncology research. Excellent supporting actors like Clancy Brown and Jimmi Simpson help showcase to Audrey why habitual line stepping can be detrimental to her mission, and sometimes collaboration and changing the rules from withing can work wonders as well. And for those ready to roll eyes at the inevitable church scenes since Audrey was a woman of faith, this is the best use of those scenes I’ve seen in a faith based film so far, telling us everything we need to know without diverting from the main story which shows how faith can be converted to a life of beautiful purpose and action.
The Hollywood cycle looks like it’s repeating itself. After a lost decade like the 1940’s we went into big Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic season. The 2020s/2030s looks primed for that to happen. So get ready for new versions of those old tales to come back y’all. And rejoice a little yeah, cause the 1970s happens after that, meaning we’re not far away from another movie renaissance. Bring on the Jesus biopics then!