“Noble” features three wonderful performances from three actresses who portray Christina Noble as a young child, a young woman, and then a woman around 40. The story opens in Dublin, Ireland, in 1955. Christina is devoted to her parents, but she has a difficult life to endure, as her mother is gravely ill and her father comes home drunk too often. He yells and breaks things. One night, the only thing that calms him down is the song that the talented young girl sings.
When a tragedy strikes, young Christina is separated from her siblings and taken to a Catholic orphanage where some of the sisters treat her harshly at times. Eventually she grows older, and in a dramatic scene, she has lunch as a teenager with her father. She gives him a large bill that he is supposed to break, but he leaves her to pay for the meal with no money. He does not return. Eventually she goes to Vietnam and begins to make a difference in the children’s lives there. In one scene, she looks at hungry children scrounging for morsels of food from a dumpster, and she sadly remembers doing the same thing as a child. She helps one young girl who is taken to a motel room by a man. She seizes the girl from his clutches and eventually arranges for his arrest by finding proof that he was dabbling in child pornography. Along the way, she endures a lot of personal tests and trials, but she keeps talking to God, looking for His strength and help.
By the film’s end, we are told that Christina Noble has set up more than 100 projects in Vietnam and Mongolia and has provided protection, education, and health care for more than 700,000 children and their families. In addition, she has won several awards for her humanitarian efforts. We are pleased to award “Noble” our “Faith-Friendly” Seal for ages 12-plus. It is a gritty and dramatic story about an amazing and unique woman.
