Watching Beth Harrington's The Blinking Madonna & Other Miracles, I was reminded of Kathleen Norris' surprise bestseller The Cloister Walk. The main difference between the two works is that Harrington went looking for community and found an odd spiritual experience; Norris went looking for spirituality and found (this reader would argue) community. As we approach the millennium, people, in general, are looking for community and spirituality. Harrington's quest opens with a long, rather self-indulgent, segment outlining her Irish-Catholic upbringing during the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Viewers are treated to vignettes which are alternately tiresome (a nun taking forever to walk down a hall) and quite funny (students in costume portraying the lives of the saints), followed by an Oliver Stone-worthy blitz of imagery used as shorthand to say that 1) the ‘60s were a time of change, and 2) Harrington drifted away from the church--a personal odyssey shared by millions. The second part of the film details the filmmaker's attempts to fit in to Boston's North End community, and her understandable funk after a lover of 13 years opted for a newer model. In the final third, we come to the end of the pilgrimage--finally seeing the image of the "blinking Madonna" Harrington captured while videotaping a holy feast parade. Now, as then, some will see the "blink" as a result of the camera's going momentarily out of focus; others will see a sign of God's presence in the world. While the sum is not greater than the parts here, Harrington's flashes of warm wit, plucky spirit, and overriding sense of needing to belong (which we all share) make her an endearing cinematic heroine and tip the scales toward a recommendation of an otherwise uneven film. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)
The Blinking Madonna & Other Miracles
(1995) 58 min. $199. New Day Films. PPR. ISBN: 1-57448-045-6. Vol. 12, Issue 4
The Blinking Madonna & Other Miracles
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