I would never have known about this movie had I not come across it on Netflix. I haven't watched any of the other films about Mother Teresa, so I can't compare, but none of these biography movies are big names, I think. Maybe because Mother Teresa herself isn't that big a name?
I'm not really sure how she's perceived in the rest of the world, but I grew up in Bangladesh, where she greatly revered. Indeed she's revered throughout South Asia, probably the most in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) where she was based. But I know Bangladeshis specifically revere her because she helped the refugees who fled from present-day Bangladesh to Kolkata during the Independence War, and after the war, she came over and built orphanages and shelters for women.
This biography shows how she got started with her work - how she left the life of a cloistered nun in a convent and went to work in the slums. The movie didn't directly reference the Bengal famine of '43, but that had to be a huge motivator, because people were dying en mass on the street due to starvation.
The biography then follows her through a few milestones of her work and how she came to form and lead the Missionaries of Charity convent, all the while highlighting her growing sense of loneliness and despair and feeling of abandonment as she expressed in her letters to her spiritual adviser. I thought the movie had a strong emotional core. And I also thought Juliet Stevenson gave a fantastic performance as Mother Teresa (although I wondered if she overdid the accent a tad?). And I really connected with her performance and the story of this woman who really was as selfless as they come.
She always insisted that she was doing God's work, that it was His will that she do this work, not hers. I take this to mean that the calling she felt to help the poor was a force much greater than herself.
There are a few minor gripes I have with the film though. First, I was looking forward to seeing Kolkata/Calcutta in film. Bengal and Bengalis don't get much attention in International films. While there were a very few spoken lines in Bengali, most of the characters (even the slum dwellers) spoke in English with each other. I understand this was done for the ease of the audience, but they spoke perfect posh English and they came off as somewhat genteel and polished, which was at odds with the fact that they lived in slums.
I was also disappointed that their names were pronounced the Hindi way rather than the Bengali way. And there were lots of scenes when people are shouting in the background and the subtitles say "speaking in Bengali", but the words were unintelligible and in some instances they sounded Hindi. Maybe they just didn't get enough Bengalis on board while making this movie, and that was disappointing. But I suppose this is how most people from third world countries feel when they see their countries not depicted quite right on the screen.
Finally, there was a glaring anachronism that I noted. Characters referred to Bangladesh during scenes taking place in 1949 - right after the partition. Bangladesh ought to have been referred to as East Pakistan. Unless I am deeply misinformed about the history of my country, the name Bangladesh didn't come into usage until many years later when East Pakistan started thinking about Independence. (And it was only after independence that it became officially known as Bangladesh.)
However, I suppose these gripes are rather minor in the larger context of the film. I'm glad to have watched at least one movie where I learned about how she got started and formed her congregation.
