Where to begin with Carrie Pilby (2016).  If nothing else, I think I may never watch any film outside of the “Feel Good Movies” category on Netflix.  It is also one that I had been dancing around for a few days.  Luckily, it was still on the streaming service when I finally got to it.  I am finding so much more fodder for my Catholic energies than the typical blockbuster tripe that gets the herds flocking to the cinema.  I am looking at you, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, for which I have a ticket for this weekend.  As for Carrie Pilby, I could relate to the eponymous character (Bel Powley) much more than any giant, anthropomorphic robot animal.  Sigh.  Nonetheless, as we are reminded in today’s piece, life does not always go as we plan it.

Carrie Pilby is a nineteen-year-old bonafide genius living on her own in New York.  Her father supports her from London, a place where she is from but has no desire to return to despite Mr. Pilby’s (Gabriel Byrne) wishes.  We also see that things are tense between them when he informs her that he will not be coming home for Thanksgiving.  Part of what he pays for his daughter is her therapy with Dr. Petrov (Nathan Lane).  It is evident that she is not happy, so Dr. Petrov comes up with a list of items for her to do in order to improve her mood.  Not understanding the need for such emotions but eager to prove him wrong, she accepts.  Many of the tasks involve being social, which is not her bailiwick.  She receives a boost in this department, though, when dad phones to tell her that he has arranged employment for her.  It is to her suiting as well.  Yes, there are a couple of co-workers, but it is at night and involves one of her favorite pastimes: reading.  More precisely, she is a proof-reader for a law firm correcting legal briefs.  Speaking of reading, this helps to introduce a source of angst and an insight into why she is withdrawn.  In a flashback, we see her as a younger teenager at Harvard University, the result of an accelerated learning path.  At sixteen, she took a course on English literature with David Harrison (Colin O’Donoghue).  There are a series of interludes with this part of her life, but I am going to describe them all here for clarity’s sake.  David is taken with Carrie’s brilliance on the first day of the course.  This soon leads to them going out to dinner outside of class.  She is extremely smart, but as impressionable as anyone else at that age, particularly by those who are on equal intellectual footing.  As such, it turns into a sexual relationship, despite her young age.  Yet, one night as they are in bed, he asks her to say something (what these words are is strangely not revealed) that she finds demeaning and refuses.  He then abruptly tells her to leave.  This sad moment makes her need to go out on a date quite the ordeal, or at least she makes it such when she decides to look up somebody in the personal advertisements in the local paper.  She lands on Matt (Jason Ritter), whose blurb proclaims him to be an engaged man who needs to go on dates to figure out whether marriage is right for him.  Carries responds to it with the intention of meeting this person and exposing his philandering.  This way she can go on a date and maintain her moral rigidity.  Matt turns out to be a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a pretty smart one to boot, seeing through her fake name as a deep literary reference.  Though she does not understand the purpose of this social exercise, she finds that she can at least have meaningful conversations with him.  Later, pushed by the arguably awful advice of her co-workers, Carrie decides to go to Matt’s place with the intention of sleeping with him.  Their interaction is headed in that direction until she sees a picture of his fiancée on a side table, and with the word “too” misspelled, which further dissuades her.  Thank God for poor grammar, I suppose.  This comes on quite the bad day, it being Christmas Eve to boot, when she also finds out that dad is going to marry another woman with her own family, one of her gold fish dies (another point on the list), and discovers that Dr. Petrov is involved with a married woman.  Going back to her apartment, she lets out a scream that is heard by her next-door neighbor, Cy (William Moseley).  They had a few interactions already, but she had been brushing him off as she does practically everyone else.  All the same, he manages to convince her to go for a walk with him.  It is a moment of connection with another human being, without pretensions, and it is exactly what she needs.  It also gives her the courage to call David and demand that he return her favorite book, one that she had loaned him on that fateful night.  He gives her the run-around, but it is a step for her.  Still, she goes to Dr. Petrov’s office the next day prepared to throw the list in his face and tell him she is no happier than when she started.  What she is not prepared for is to find her dad there waiting for her.  She is mad at him too, but relents later when they run into each other at their favorite spot in Central Park.  To further mend their issues, he insists on taking her to David’s house and retrieving her book.  Further, in front of David’s wife and gathered Christmas guests, Mr. Pilby punches David in the face for hurting Carrie.  From here, Carrie reconciles with Dr. Petrov, briefly goes out for New Year’s, and spends the rest of the evening with Cy watching the fireworks from the fire escape.

Carrie Pilby is a lovely movie, and one that I will watch again.  There are a lot of directions for this Catholic reviewer to go here.  One that I have covered with other films is pre-marital sex.  Once more, Catholicism frowns upon it.  While it is not quite accurate to say that Carrie shares this sentiment, she does call society out for its pre-occupation with the carnal act.  Also, observe the emotional drama her experience with David brings her.  Even if the Faith and society cannot agree on the importance of waiting, what this movie echoes from the Catechism is how sex is not light matter.  This is why we hope that people reserve it for after a marriage discernment process and making vows before God.  Speaking of heavy subjects, the aspect of the movie I appreciate most is Carrie’s character.  She has a dedication to doing the right thing that I greatly admire.  It is, of course, impossible to be perfect, and we see her make mistakes.  Even more endearing, though, is that she prays for forgiveness.  Granted, it involves the caveat that she does not believe in God.  All the same, it is something for a person of her extreme aptitude to admit the existence of something bigger than herself.  Getting back to her uprightness, throughout the film she is questioned by others for maintaining her principles.  This is a major reason why the Church has lost followers over the years.  People want to do what they want to do, no matter the consequences, either in the moment or for eternity.  Whether anyone is willing to acknowledge it, faith in God has provided an objective morality that informs Carrie’s prayer.

I would love to spend more time with Carrie Pilby’s conversation with God.  It is everything a Catholic could hope for from a non-believer.  She asks for help for the helpless, mercy for her deceased mother (after a fashion), blessings for her father, and forgiveness for her sins, even though with this last one she somewhat complains about how hard they are to avoid.  There are some fun ones, too, like wanting everyone to correctly pronounce in excelsis Deo, and wishing Jesus happy birthday.  She may say that He does not exist, but like so many others in moments of desperation, who else are they turning to at these times?