This movie is based on the true story of an Irish woman's search for her lost son. One of the two main characters is Philomena Lee, a 69-year-old Irish woman and former psychiatric nurse of 30 years, who is now retired and lives in England with her family. The other is Martin Sixsmith, a former BBC journalist, who is world-weary and depressed because he has been dismissed from his civil service position due to a scandal of which he is innocent.
We learn from a series of flashbacks that in Ireland, in 1952, 18-year-old Philomena got pregnant from a fling with a local boy she had met at a fair. With her mother having long been dead, she had nobody else to teach her about life, and she knew nothing about becoming pregnant. She was sent to a Catholic convent which served a role as a home for unwed mothers at that time, with a contract to work in the laundry for seven days a week for three years. She had a baby boy there, and named him Anthony. The children were kept in a nursery, and the mothers were allowed to see them for only an hour a day. When Anthony was three years old, he was taken away for adoption in exchange with a generous donation to the convent. Philomena could do nothing but helplessly stare at them driving away. My son is all grown up now, and he did give me some hard times while growing up, but he sure was a cute little thing when he was three years old. It's too excruciating just to imagine the agony of parting with one's own flesh and blood at such an early age.
Philomena kept the secret to herself for all these years, but on Anthony's 50th birthday, she confesses to her daughter Jane that she had a son fifty years ago. She tells her daughter that she began to think that it was worse a sin to keep it secret than having committed it.
Jane happens to meet Martin Sixsmith at a journalists' party where she is filling in for her friend as caterer, and suggests him to write a story about her mother. At first, he dismisses the suggestion disdainfully, saying that he doesn't do any human interest stories because it's a euphemism for stories aimed at weak-minded ignorant people. But on second thought, he decides to do it, as he has to make a living one way or another after all. He arranges a magazine assignment to write about Philomena's search for her son.
They visit the Irish convent where Philomena had her baby, but they are told that there is no clue left because all the documents regarding the children were burnt to ashes in a big fire some time ago, except the document that she was coerced into signing when she had her baby to promise that she wouldn't make any sort of inquiry what the convent did with her child. They learn at the local pub that many children were adopted by wealthy American couples, and they decide to go to the U.S. to look for him. They find out that he turned out to be a very important person in U.S. politics.
I guess I shouldn't write further, as this is going to be a spoiler for those who feel like seeing this movie. But if you are interested, you could easily find out whom Anthony turned out to be, and what happened after that.
One of the most memorable scenes in this movie was when Philomena and Sixsmith confronted the former head nun of the convent after they found out that Anthony had visited the convent himself to make inquiry about a woman who had given birth to him. At the beginning of the movie, Sixsmith considers this search to be just a job, but as the story proceeds, we can see that he is intrigued by the compelling facts about Philomena and her son, and that he becomes very empathetic. He is infuriated by the fact that the nun treacherously hid the fact from them that Anthony was looking for his mother, and calls her evil. When the nun sanctimoniously insists that it served the fallen woman right, Philomena tells her calmly, "I forgive you." The contrast between Sixsmith and Philomena was mind-blowing. If I were her, I could never say those words.
