REVIEW OF THE MOVIE:

MOLOKAI: THE STORY OF FR. DAMIEN

A divine romance, a tragic comedy, a spectacular feast of beauty and horror, goodness and sin in battle;
seeing the extreme goodness of one man in love with God overcoming an ocean of obstacles that would
lead a lesser man to despair, and those in despair to a glorious hope.

Blessed Father Damien loved his God, and loved the people he had volunteered to serve in the full
knowledge that he would die of the dreaded leprosy. The remaining forty seven lepers at the Hawaiian
Island of Molokai were apprehensive in mid-July 2000, when their head nurse and sheriff told me about
the film Paul Cox and his multi-national crew had completed on their island the year before. They were
pleased with the wonderful people of that film crew, yet concerned how the final draft would turn out.
Concern for their people, their ancestors and especially for their hero, Fr. Damien.

After the screening at the Capitol Theatre in Melbourne on Saturday 29 July, I told the makers and
actors that those on Molokai would be proud of what they had achieved. I forgot to add that I am sure
Fr. Damien was pleased as well. The scenes were all superb. Even those I wondered at how one would
show with delicacy such moral and physical horrors Damien faced, were all done with great tact and
Catholic modesty. How to show a drunken orgy of lepers modestly? Cox has achieved this.

The Catholic side of the story was done to perfection. The theology and liturgy and spiritual lives
portrayed were startlingly accurate. I went to the Island this very month, hoping to give them the very
same Latin Mass Fr. Damien has provided 125 years ago, and the movie shows well that Mass and the
traditional Catholic devotions on the screen.(If the Sheriff and the Nursing superior who spoke with me wish to
have regular or occasional Latin Masses in St. Philomena Church or elsewhere on Molokai, contact our District Superior
for the USA, who sends a priest to two of the eight islands every month: Fr. Peter Scott via www.sspx.org. )

If I have to compare the movie with something, I can only think of the Ten Commandments; a great
show for those of the three great religions who believe in Moses. But for those who wish to see the
Great Law of Christ’s love put into practice, and the One True Religion displayed in the best and worst
of its members (see Matt: 13;48 the bad fish in the Church will be thrown into the eternal fire at their end) see this
film. It will make you cry but it will make you love the Good God and help you find peace in His true
Church at last.

I will insist that all those under my pastoral care take pains to watch this movie. I urge all to harass the
producers that it may be quickly released and widely spread:

Mr. Paul Cox Review by Fr. Kevin Robinson (www.sspx.com)

Illumination Films:
1 Victoria Ave Albert Park (Many thanks to Margo, Paul’s right hand ‘man’)
Melbourne VIC ph 03 9690 5266 e-mail: margotau@netspace.net.au