Entertaining Angels

Starring:Peter O'Brien (II), Tina Bursill, Dale Stevens
Director: Michael Brindley
Studio: Vision Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Description
Dorothy Day is no saint. She lives hard, makes mistakes, endures the consequences. But the unquenchable fire burning within her cannot be contained. Dorothy wants to make a difference. During the Depression, she vows to house the homeless, feed the hungry, tend the sick. Easily said. Not easily done when her total finances amount to 97 cents in a battered canister. Yet Dorothy persists, walking on frequently stormy waters of faith.

Popular stars and important themes combine in this compelling true story of the "American Mother Teresa," filmed by Paulist Pictures (Romero) from a script by ER writer and executive producer John Wells. Moira Kelly plays Day, the impassioned New York journalist who launched the activist newspaper "Catholic Worker" and put the words she wrote into controversial action. Martin Sheen, Melinda Dillon and Brian Keith join Kelly in this moving saga of a faith not just believed, but lived.

RATED PG-13 for a range of thematic elements, some sexuality and brief language.

Description

Dorothy Day is no saint. She lives hard, makes mistakes, endures the consequences. But the unquenchable fire burning within her cannot be contained. Dorothy wants to make a difference. During the Depression, she vows to house the homeless, feed the hungry, tend the sick. Easily said. Not easily done when her total finances amount to 97 cents in a battered canister. Yet Dorothy persists, walking on frequently stormy waters of faith.

RATED PG-13 for a range of thematic elements, some sexuality and brief language.

Customer Reviews:

Listening to God & Doing His Will.......2007-02-12

I had only briefly read of Dorothy Day and didn't really know much about her before I watched this movie. Moira Kelly is very believable in her role as Dorothy, and I think the movie does a good job of portraying her life. In a very touching scene Dorothy says to God, "You really sneak up on a person, don't you?" This is so true. Sometimes when we least expect Him.

"The film's description says "Dorothy Day is no saint." I'm not sure if that's true. Saints are not perfect, only God is. In one scene Dorothy says, "I don't think God will judge us on how successful we are at changing the world. I do think He will judge us on how faithful we are?" She certainly was faithful.

Having recently watched a movie about Mother Teresa and the poverty in India, I was somewhat surprised to see just how bad things once were in our own country. Dorothy, like Mother Teresa, was open to God's words to her. She, like all of us, had times when she felt God had deserted her. Her words: "Where are you? Why don't you answer me? I need you!" have certainly been mine own at times.

A Change of Heart.......2007-02-12

I saw this film when it was originally released. At the time, I was not as impressed with it as I had been with "Romero" another film produced? by the late Paulist Father Bud Kaiser. I reluctantly used this movie in a recent adult religious education series in our parish entitled "American Catholics", after not finding a filmed interview with Dorothy Day I had seen years before. The participants in the evening were taken with the story, especially as they are reading Day's "The Long Loneliness" as part of the series. After viewing the film for the first time in ten? or more years, I found my opinion had mellowed. It presents a portrait of Dorothy Day which is compelling, entertaining and quite useful as a means to introduce contemporary Catholics to this most fascinating and perhaps most influential American Catholic in the last 100 years.

While not a blockbuster hollywood extravaganza, by comparison it certainly falls into the top notch "tv movie" genre and well worth a viewing.

Rich with insights.......2007-01-12

I'm not sure how this would be rated by "Hollywood" standards -- and I don't care. This film gives insights into struggle for identity and self-worth, holiness of ordinary people, mission of the Christians and mission of the Church through the beauty of a very human person who became very Christian. I used this with my class of sophomores: they were intrigued and easily "got the message." Most importantly, they found a genuine role model in Dorothy Day.

Great Teaching Tool.......2006-03-16

I've been using this video for years in the context of morality and social justice religious studies courses. The movie is a good representation of Dorothy Day's life though it gets rather melodramatic at the end. It does a great job illustratiing the transformation that happens in Dorothy's life and how she and Peter Maurin develop the Catholic Worker together. Another critique would be that Maruin's role in the process is minimized but it is, after all, a movie about Day, not Maurin who generally gets less credit than Day. The movie certainly opens up a lot of discussion about faith, transformation and our call to social justice.

Dorothy Day.......2005-08-29

For years I have had only a vague knowledge of Dorothy Day. I knew that she had founded something called "The Catholic Worker" and that in her time she was considered by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover to be a dangerous radical. Yet she was always only a footnote in someone else's biography. Last week in a used book store at the Library in Cornwall, NY, I happened accross a copy of By Little and By Little: The Selected Writings of Dorothy Day. After reading it, a whole new world opened up for me and I had to explore everything connected with this great woman and her beautiful life. Naturally, I purchased this film.

Entertaining Angels, produced by Paulist Films, is as fine a film biography of Dorothy as one could hope for. Moira Kelly, a great actress, gives a sensitive, sympathetic performance in the title role. You may remember her portrayal of Oona O'Neill, Charlie Chaplin's fourth wife in the film "Chaplin". Martin Sheen is also great as Peter Maurin, Dorothy's friend and spiritual mentor.

The film tells the story of Dorothy's evolution from political radical to her conversion to catholicism and the hardships and joy she experienced on the journey. Dorothy Day was a "true Christian", the personification of that very overused and abused term. She not only worked tirelessly for the poor and unloved, she lived among them and considered herself to be one of them.

When one puts her in juxtaposition with some of today's "men of Christ": the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons - praying on TV for tax relief for the richest two percent or calling for the assassination of a sovergn leader of another nation - one wants to weep.

A beautiful film.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

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