An inspiring story of faith

Noble (PG-13) tells the dramatic true story of Christina Noble, who overcomes a harsh childhood in Ireland to give her life to helping abandoned children.

 

 

The film moves between scenes of Christina’s life growing up in Ireland and her arrival in Vietnam in 1989, 14 years after the end of the war. Different actors portray her as a child, as a young adult and as an older adult, arriving in Ho Chi Minh City with only a few dollars and unsure why she is even there. Years earlier, she has a dream about Vietnam, a country “she wouldn’t be able to show you on a map,” and it sticks with her.

Christina grows up in poverty in Dublin. Her mother dies when she’s young, and her father is an alcoholic who hits his wife. Christina is a talented singer and shows great resilience. When her father agrees to have her and her siblings removed from the home and sent to a Catholic orphanage, she escapes briefly and goes to a pub and sings. Captured, she endures harsh punishment from the nuns at the orphanage, which feels clichéd.

As a young adult, she is on her own and gets a job in a factory, where she meets a woman who becomes a close friend. She survives a gang rape (not shown), loses her job and is taken to a Catholic shelter. There she gives birth to a boy, who is taken from her and given up for adoption.

Later, she marries, has three children and finally leaves her abusive husband.

This litany of suffering is all back story to the amazing work she does later. Despite her experiences, she retains a faith in God. The film offers several scenes of her talking frankly to God, sometimes in a church, sometimes on her bed. While the film doesn’t dwell on her religious faith, it also doesn’t provide much explanation how she remains faithful, given all that life—and the church—has done to her. We’re supposed to just accept that this is how she is.

After she arrives in Vietnam, she notices children on the street and begins caring for them. One day, she happens by an orphanage and convinces the Vietnamese woman who runs it to let her work there.

Overcome by how many children are in need of care and protection, particularly from sex traffickers, she eventually convinces donors to give her funds, and she creates a ministry that has now reached hundreds of thousands of children throughout Asia.

Despite the description above of Christina’s life growing up, the film isn’t as hard-hitting as it might have been. It lacks the gritty realism that a film with better production values or a different director might have brought. This tamer approach, I imagine, is intentional, since the film is geared to a more conservative audience.

And while it is geared toward presenting a message of faith, it doesn’t feel heavy-handed. Christina is clearly a woman of faith, though it’s not clear how that happened. Inarguably, however, hers is an inspiring story.

Noble is available on DVD.

Women confront gender-based violence

The linked problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence and maternal mortality claim one woman every 90 seconds, according to a four-hour documentary film shown on PBS stations in October and available online at pbs.org/halfthesky. On the other hand, it is women and girls who are doing the most to change such human-rights abuses across the globe.

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is inspired by the book of the same name by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, who are New York Times reporters.

The film visits 10 countries and follows Kristof and celebrity activists America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union and Olivia Wilde as it tells the stories of inspiring, courageous individuals.

Kristof and WuDunn, who lived in China and reported on events there, became aware that China aborted 39,000 female fetuses in one year, and no one was reporting this. Their focus on human-rights abuses against women grew from there and led to their book.

In the film, Kristof and Mendes visit Sierra Leone, a country recovering from a civil war that ended in 2002. However, the incidences of rape that increased during the war continued afterward, reinforced by a culture where shame falls on the survivor rather than the perpetrator and where laws fail to prosecute rapists.

Kristof and Mendes talk with the director of a rape crisis center, who says they’ve seen 9,000 survivors in eight years, and 26 percent of these were under 12 years old. She shows them a 3-year-old who had been raped.

Kristof and Mendes talk with a 14-year-old who says she was raped by her “uncle,” who is a pastor. Others have also said he attacked them. They go with the police, who arrest the man. They talk with him, and he denies the charge.

In the end, he is released, and the girl’s father expels her and her mother from his home because she brought shame on the family.

The lesson is that rape is unfortunate but forgivable, while being raped is punishable. Less than 1 percent of the rapes reported to authorities are prosecuted.

Next, Kristof and Ryan visit Cambodia and meet the amazing Somaly, who runs an organization that rescues girls from brothels. Somaly, who speaks four languages, was taken from her village at age 10 or 11 and sold to a brothel at age 12 and brutalized. Later she escaped and now helps girls in similar  circumstances.

While the problem can feel overwhelming, she says, “everyone can do something.” The most important tool in fighting sex trafficking and other gender-based violence is education.

The film next visits Vietnam, where the organization Room to Read helps girls gain access to good education. One girl bikes 17 miles to her school.

In many poor families across the world, girls are kept at home to work, while boys are more likely to receive education beyond the fifth grade. One Vietnamese father, whose wife had died, sacrifices in order for his daughter to attend school.

The film notes that schools are often a safe haven, that education is transformative. It’s also a great investment in a community because “when you educate a girl, you educate a village.”

This documentary is both hard to watch and inspiring. It presents a huge problem long ignored by most of us, yet it offers hope. The film is definitely worth seeing.