“Unlike Mel Gibson, my interest does not spring from any religious point of view,” says documentary filmmaker Pamela Mason Wagner, whose latest project presents a compelling portrait of one of the most misunderstood figures in history. “Patrick's story intrigued me for its dramatic elements: a rich boy kidnapped and enslaved by pirates, who escapes slavery — a feat unheard of at that time — only to go back and show mercy to his captors. That's pretty exciting stuff.”
A graduate of Dartmouth College who won an Emmy® Award for her program in the American Masters series, “Finding Lucy,” and has collaborated with journalist Bill Moyers on several projects including the Emmy® Award-winning “Healing and the Mind,” Mason Wagner reflects on “Patrick,” which premieres Sunday, March 14 (10/9c) on Hallmark Channel.
What attracts you to the stories of saints?
I've been drawn to the lives of the saints because they invariably make good stories. The challenge in telling the story of a saint is to make that person real, believable and most importantly human. Over the centuries vast amounts of piety, legend, and myth have sprung up around these larger-than-life historical figures. My job is to strip that away, to get to the essence of who they really were, to uncover their voices. That's why we've restricted ourselves in this latest film Patrick to using Patrick's own writings as our primary source, and happily we have the very able talents of Gabriel Byrne bringing Patrick's words to life. There's enough good storytelling in what really happened to him to make a very exciting hour; we didn't need to rely on the myths and legends, because the true story is much more interesting, and less understood.
Compared to other saints, why are Patrick, Francis (whom you profiled in a previous documentary) and Joan (one of your next subjects) so universal and immortal?
I think there are several reasons these three have captured the world's imagination. First, they each became symbols for an entire nation: Francis for Italy; Patrick for his adopted Ireland; and Joan for France. Second, they are wildly individualistic, and defy categorization. These are not goody-goody saints that tow the line for the Church. Francis was such an independent thinker that he refused to become a priest; Patrick fought with his ecclesiastical superiors when they went against the Church's precepts; and Joan stayed true to her voices only to be betrayed by her Church. All these individuals shook up the status quo; everybody likes a character who does that!
Are you approaching St. Patrick's story from a historical, religious or human perspective?
This film definitely approaches Patrick's story from a human perspective. We are trying to get inside the human being who was cold and afraid and felt abandoned on that hillside in the north of Ireland. Our narrator, Liam Neeson, mentioned during his recording session that, as a boy, his father took him to the hillside associated with Patrick's conversion. Patrick's religion sprang from his personal relationship with God — a theme shared by Francis, Patrick and Joan — so the religious perspective is really through his eyes. The film always refers to him as Patrick, not Saint Patrick. We're telling the story of the man.
What, if anything, surprised you about St. Patrick as his story unfolded?
I had no idea going into this what a high regard Patrick had for women. He saw an active role for women in his religious movement. That was unusual for the time. Perhaps Patrick was influenced by his six years of slavery in Ireland, where he would have observed women holding a much higher position in society than they could in the Roman Empire.
In 5th century Ireland, women could own property, could divorce their husbands and generally speaking did wield some power. It is ironic that after Patrick's time, when the institutional Church took hold, the position for women got worse in Ireland.
What's the genesis of the “driving the snakes out of Ireland” story?
This story, which is often the only thing that people have ever heard about Patrick, probably stems from the medieval association of paganism with serpents. It's ironic, even funny that Ireland never had snakes to begin with! After the last ice age, the land bridge between Ireland and continental Europe closed too early for the reptiles to migrate that far north.
How do you think St. Patrick would want to be remembered? (Certainly not from green beer!)
I think Patrick would want to be remembered for what he really was: a slave who returned forgiveness instead of vengeance to his former captors; a teacher who encouraged literacy for all; and as a moral leader, willing to stand up to his superiors and criticize their actions when they did not measure up to the ethical standards their own religion espoused.
Why do people associate St. Patrick with the shamrock?
It was interesting for me to learn that the shamrock was a sacred plant for the druids, and was therefore linked to the indigenous religion that existed in Ireland before Patrick arrived. Like so many Christian symbols, holidays, and rituals, it looks like this sacred pagan plant was co-opted by the Christians for their own purposes. Because of its three-leaf shape, it suggested the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to some mythmaker along the way. That idea obviously appealed to a lot of visual artists who have created numerous paintings and statues of Patrick holding the shamrock down through the ages.
(This article courtesy of Hallmark Channel).
