ureleased Thursday on Netflix, The Prodigy is enthralling for the strength with which he tells the timeless clash between religion and science. In an era, 1862, in which the context is archaic and foggy, made of superstitions and popular beliefs passed off as faith. A dark and at the same time magnetic set: for history, photography, scenography. And a sinister atmosphere that captures, intrigues, fascinatesalso for the musical commentary.
Behind the story is the novel of the same name by Emma Donoghuetransposed from Sebastian Lelio (Chilean director of A fantastic womanOscars 2018 Best Foreign Language Film) in a film-vehicle for the skill of Florence Pugh – nurse who defends the truth against Catholic fanaticism.
The Prodigythe plot
Lib Wright (Pugh) is an English nurse who arrives in the irish midlands (bleak and magnificent) with an unusual task: to observe the little one Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy), 11 years old, that seems not eaten for four months yet bursting with health.
For the rural community of very Catholic Ireland, where he lives Anna with parents (curiosity: the mother Rosaleen is played by the real mother of the actress), there is no doubt: it is a prodigy. A divine sign, which however arouses too much clamor and annoys the town, accustomed to not having extraneous presences. Instead, since the rumor of the “miraculous Anna”, onlookers swoop in from outside as well as nosy journalists. Thus, a “committee of wise men”, composed of the doctor and the priest of the village together with a representative of the Municipality, decided to have an objective report from two different people. A nun and a nurse. Religion and science.
The clash is immediate. free investigate, collect as much information as possible. And the references to wedding ring they are constant. On the contrary: pressing. Discovers that Anna hasn’t eaten since turned 11, the same day he did the First Communion. “A blessed day,” a is told free«the last time he ate the flesh of our Saviour». free: «That is, Water and flour». Answer: «No, the Body and Blood of Jesus».
Florence Pugh (Lib Wright) and Kila Cassidy (Anna). (Netflix)
There wedding ring (or presumed such) not only surrounds the child (Parents don’t want to “force” their daughter to eat because they say they think she’s some sort of “chosen by God”, the doctor considers the girl endowed with particular powers for which she «feeds on magnetism” or “transforms the sun’s rays into energy for the body»). But she is the same Anna to be obsessed with faith: she plays with the cards of the Saints, she prays 33 times a day during her fast, she doesn’t want to eat because she thinks she feeds herself only with “manna from heaven”.
The Faith That Feeds With “Manna From Heaven”
freerational and practical woman, it imposes itself. It prevents anyone from seeing the little girl. And from that moment, without food, the baby begins to weaken, up to risking her life. So it turns out that to feed Anna it wasn’t there “manna from heaven”, but of the food chewed by mother who then slipped it into the child’s mouth when he kissed her good night or good morning.
Tremendous why this was happening: sort of atonement for an incestuous sin, kept secret, but still inadmissible in such a devout and Catholic family. For “free souls from hell» are all convinced that the atonement of Anna. Even if that means killing the child. The only solution to salvation it is to make Anna die and be reborn with another identity. And this is the plan in which, amidst a thousand difficulties, he comes across free.
The Prodigy: true story or made up?
A Irish hinterland languid and lonely. A gothic-medieval climate from “witch hunt”. The spectral anxiety of insinuating music. Established that The Prodigy it is also one love story: that between free and the reporter Will (Tom Burke) is between free and the little one Annawatching the film, the fateful question arises: whether it is a true story or an invented one.
About this Emma Donoghue’s statements are authentic, who has repeatedly underlined how the novel is based on a sum of cases, of various inexplicable stories drawn from the memoirs (written and oral) of the Great Famine (1845-1851). So the story jumps to the next decade, why? «Because because I wanted to contrast the idea of voluntary starvation to the frightening context of involuntary starvation’, said Emma in an interview with NPR. The writer has thus mixed historical data and fantasy in an environment that she knows very well, Irish Catholicism.
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