The Letters (2014) on Netflix
Mother Teresa becomes one of the world's most admired humanitarians. Her letters to her spiritual advisor, Celeste van Exem, tell of a woman who felt alone and abandoned by God.
- Netflix2.3/5
- IMDb6.3/101,205 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes29%
Trailer
Plot summary
A Vatican priest, Celeste van Exem, investigates the acts and life's work of Mother Teresa and recounts her humanitarian effort among the poor, the political opposition she met, her religious zeal, and a spirit that would not break. His account is built on the letters she wrote across the last forty years of her life, many of them addressed to van Exem, her spiritual advisor and confessor. Those letters record a spiritual suffering and emptiness and a feeling of isolation and of abandonment by God, set beside the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded and the admiration she drew worldwide. Van Exem confides in his friend and confidant, Father Benjamin Praagh.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Letters (2014)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- William Riead built his screenplay around a cache of formerly confidential letters Mother Teresa wrote to her spiritual advisor, the Belgian Jesuit priest Celeste van Exem, over a nearly 50-year correspondence.
- Riead began exploring ideas for an inspirational film just before the September 11 attacks, which he said forced a realization that came to define the project. "I didn't know there was that kind of evil in this world until then," he said.
- The Letters took writer-director Riead fourteen years to produce, and the film became a labor of love for him over that time.
- The film was shot primarily in India, but the scenes featuring Max von Sydow as Father van Exem and Rutger Hauer as Father Benjamin Praagh were shot in a 15th-century London monastery.
- In 2016 the score's Agnus Dei was performed live in Rome's Pantheon Basilica by the PfizerPfonics, a Cork-based choir, as part of the 5th Rome Music Festival.
