"Mother Teresa" is pious, inspiring viewing

Review of Mother Teresa
by Catholic News Service

Told with visual eloquence, this reverent film movingly dramatizes the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Olivia Hussey), from her years as a young nun teaching at a girls' convent school in India; to serving the suffering in the slums of Calcutta; to founding the Missionaries of Charity; to becoming an ambassador of hope and compassion, and concluding shortly before her death in 1997. Filmed on location in Sri Lanka and Italy, the movie chronicles her congregation's growth to an international charitable organization. . . . Director Fabrizio Costa eschews gauzy hagiography, lovingly painting this extraordinary woman in flesh-and-blood hues, resulting in a deeply human portrait of a modern-day -- if not yet officially recognized -- saint. . . .

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Review of Mother Teresa
by Steven D. Greydanus

Almost thirty years ago Olivia Hussey played the most venerated woman of all time, the Virgin Mary, in Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth.” Now she portrays the most revered woman of the twentieth century in the reverential, Italian-made English-language production Mother Teresa.

Hussey’s earnest performance brings to life Blessed Teresa of Calcutta’s determination, simplicity and idealistic faith, from her early growing absorption with the desperate condition of the poverty-stricken and dying in the streets of Calcutta through the difficulties that faced her efforts to establish a new congregation and its various projects, and beyond. . . .

Despite its limitations, Mother Teresa is pious, inspiring viewing, most worth seeing for Hussey’s effective portrayal of the beati’s dogged personality, idiosyncratic leadership and administrative style, and total self-abandonment to serving Jesus in the poorest of the poor.

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