Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story

...and as good an introduction as I could hope to someone who had to have been a complex person.

I'd only heard of Dorothy Day before I viewed this movie at a Catholic retreat house run by the Redemptorists.

I suspect the producers felt they could go only so far with the subject matter, but they paid attention. The fact that they even tried reflects well on them.

Moira Kelly credibly kept my attention throughout. I could recognize Melinda Dillon, Heather Graham, Brian Keith and Martin Sheen among the other players, but that's not to slight the large cast that truly worked as an ensemble.

I'll doubtless learn more, and plan that by reading Day's autobiography "The Long Loneliness" and her account of the Catholic Worker movement, "Loaves and Fishes".

Any film that inspires me to learn more about its subject earns my respect.

One of the finer discoveries in my search for obscure and unseen films, Moira Kelly is such an incredible, plunky, tomboy leading lady. One of the unsung stars of recent decades, from Gen X. This shows she could have been big in the 40s, 50s, or any era. Directors who knew, knew.

It was produced by the Paulist Fathers, a Catholic religious order, and directed by Michael Ray Rhodes, and the question is... who are these people? Because this is powerhouse filmmaking start to finish. The film's scale is unbelievable, every scene is crammed with energy.

The camera is so effortlessly free flowing and expressive, almost like a Japanese film the way it captures movement. When it's not moving or taking you through crowds, it is printing these beautiful human moments. It's pitch perfect acting and directing in total lockstep.

Looking astonishingly like the women she portrays Moira Kelly gives a great performance as Dorothy Day who with the Catholic Worker movement managed to combine Karl Marx and Jesus Christ. She came to believe that man shall not live by bread alone, but bread was certainly essential. A radical doctrine for that hidebound institution known as the Roman Catholic Church.

When we first meet Dorothy Day she's a most militant suffragette and she's out there hanging out with a crowd that Warren Beatty introduced us to in Reds. They all went their separate ways be it John Reed to Russia, Eugene O'Neill to the theater. At some point Day came to believe that humankind had a soul and a spiritual hunger that the Communist Manifesto was not addressing.

She will never be considered for sainthood, she was not the type to whom sainthood is granted. She had her share of lovers, she had a child and it's not too clear whether she was married to Lenny Von Dohlen or not when their daughter was born. But if deeds is the measure she should qualify.

Brian Keith has a role and he's simply identified as the Cardinal. In fact he's Cardinal Patrick Hayes of the New York Archdiocese and while not 100% supportive was indulgent. Cardinal Hayes did quite a lot spending much of the Archdiocese's own funds to help in relief. He died in late 1938. His successor was Cardinal Francis Spellman who had he been in charge no doubt would have squelched her movement. But Catholic Workers was a fait accompli when he took over and he gave her a wide berth and her do her thing while he did his vigorous anti-Communist thing.

In fact in their scene Keith does mention that he is distressed she associates with these anti-clerical elements who are sympathetic to the Spanish Republic. She doesn't give an inch. The scene with Keith and Kelly is the high point of the film.

No sainthood for Dorothy Day, but the love and respect of millions whom she served. Really fine biographical film.

Helpful to see the life of a person now beatified. Sainthood pending. I suspect the most informative information about her is in the FBI files, from the years she was agitating for the Female vote, and for a Social security underlying our economy. Pretty clear things haven't changed.

The best of this is a view into how the errors she became painfully aware of were removed by the Grace she experienced. "You are no Marxist" is a good line. The movie nowhere mentions Therese of Liseaux who died a few years before Dorothy was born. Dorothy Day wrote the biographies for Therese of the Little Flowers parents. Like others I would like to see the movement clarified in another movie: what happened to the kids who were raised along side the poor.

This may be the best film no one has seen, despite the brief but important performance of rising star Heather Graham. {Perhaps the awkward title kept people away). "Entertaining Angels" does what few movies have: explore inner, spiritual conflict dramatically and intelligently. This is an engaging, challenging work for everyone. The film overall is not preachy, yet the religious dimension here is real, just as it is real in the lives of millions of Americans, whether the Hollywood inner-circle likes it or not.