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Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day Story

1996, Movie, PG-13, 112 mins

ENTERTAINING ANGELS: THE DOROTHY DAY STORY
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Reverential yet reductive biopic chronicling the life of the influential Roman Catholic human-rights activist Dorothy Day. Day (Moira Kelly) began her career as a newspaper journalist covering the plight of the Depression-era working class. She later cofounded the Communist monthly The Catholic Worker, opened dozens of halfway houses and became an outspoken advocate of women's rights -- all the while remaining an active member of the Catholic Church. It's worthy material, and Moira Kelly delivers a solid performance as one of this century's lesser-known feminist trailblazers. But the movie is oddly unwilling to explore the contradictions between doctrine and politics in any great depth. The film's structure is awkwardly episodic, each phase of Dorothy's career presented as a discrete dilemma punctuated by a statement of moral purpose; this is, without doubt, a message film, meant to be easily digested. Executive producer Ellwood "Bud" Kieser, founder of Paulist Productions and himself a Paulist monk, helped create TV's long-running inspirational anthology series "Insight," and much of what transpires here bears that Sunday-morning feel. leave a comment
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