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| Watching The Magdalene Sisters is hard. It is hard because there is so much inhumanity to look at. It is hard because much of the inhumanity takes place at the hands of those who are followers of Christ. It is hard because we know that it is true. |
(2002) Film Review by Darrel Manson |
| This page was created on September 17, 2003
This page was last updated on
September 18, 2003
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| CREDITS |
| Directed by Peter Mullan
Screenplay by Peter Mullan
Cast (in credits order)
Geraldine McEwan .... Sister Bridget
Anne-Marie Duff .... Margaret
Nora-Jane Noone .... Bernadette
Dorothy Duffy .... Rose/Patricia
Eileen Walsh .... Crispina/Harriet
Mary Murray .... Una
Britta Smith .... Katy
Frances Healy .... Sister Jude
Eithne McGuinness .... Sister Clementine
Phyllis MacMahon .... Sister Augusta
Rebecca Walsh .... Josephine
Eamonn Owens .... Eamonn, Margaret's brother
Chris Simpson .... Brendan
Sean Colgan .... Seamus
Daniel Costello .... Father Fitzroy
Produced by
Ed Guiney .... executive producer
Frances Higson .... producer
Paddy Higson .... line producer
Paul Trijbits .... executive producer
Alan J. Wands .... co-producer (as Alan J. 'Willy' Wands)
Original Music by Craig Armstrong
Cinematography by Nigel Willoughby
Film Editing by Colin Monie
MPAA: Rated R for violence/cruelty, nudity, sexual content and language.
Runtime: 119 min
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG |
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| SYNOPSIS |
| Peter Mullen's shocking drama THE MAGDALENE SISTERS is based on real events that took place in Ireland from the 1960s until 1996 when an estimated 30,000 young women, considered by their families to have committed sexual sins, were sent away from their homes to earn penitence working in profit-making laundries run by the Sisters of Magdalene Order. However, the acts the girls committed to have been
sent to these miserable prisons were clearly not punishable. What's worse, the nuns were cruel money grubbers who worked the girls to the point of exhaustion, and used poor living conditions and psychological abuse to break and brainwash the girls into subservience. The awful treatment the nuns gave these innocent young women was terrifying, and the ways the girls suffered were utterly disturbing.
Mullen designed the fictional characters in the film based on interviews with actual survivors of the laundries, working their stories into his plot. Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is a shy girl who is raped by her cousin at a wedding shaming her family, Patricia/Rose (Dorothy Duff) gets pregnant and her parents take her baby away from her, Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) is a pretty girl who is deemed "too flirtatious," and Crispina (Eileen Walsh) is a loving young mom whose children
are forbidden to see her and are being raised by her sister. The imposing Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan) is pure evil, and will strike fear into the souls of MAGDALENE viewers. With this expertly crafted, haunting film, Mullen presents his second feature, following 1999's ORPHANS.
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Review by
DARREL MANSON BLOG
Pastor, Artesia Christian Church, Artesia, CA
http://netministries.org/see/churches/ch01198
Darrel has an incredible love and interest in the cinematic arts. His reviews usually include independent and significantly important film. |
Watching The Magdalene Sisters is hard. It is hard because there is so much inhumanity to look at. It is hard because much of the inhumanity takes place at the hands of those who are followers of Christ. It is hard because we know that it is true.
 We enter the story of the Magdalene Laundries in the 1960s as three young women are committed by their families to the keeping of nuns to make penance for their sexual sins. Rose has had a child out of
wedlock. Bernadette is a young orphan who has been seen flirting with boys. Margaret is the victim of rape. For these "sins" they are sent to spend their lives confined, abused and virtual slaves. Others who were went to the laundries included women who left abusive husbands. Over the years, it is estimated that 30,000 women were sent to such places in Ireland. The last of the Magdalene Laundries closed in 1996.
The idea behind such a system was that women who did not fit society's ideal of women needed to be taken away to protect society from their wantonness, and given the opportunity to repent and to spend their lives working off the sin (or supposed sin) that led to their committal.
But in actuality, they were in essence imprisoned -- for life, unless their families came to reclaim them. They were forced to work without pay at hard labor. They were subject to beatings and emotional cruelty. They could well grow old and die inside the wall of the convent that they had not chosen for their life.
There is no doubt that writer-director Peter Mullan is indicting the Irish Roman Catholic Church for the crime that was done to these women. There is no priest or nun in the film that is in the least bit sympathetic. All are monsters.
 No doubt, the Church does indeed bear a good deal of the weight of the sin of what happened in all the years this system abused women -- whether sinful or not. But Mullan's focus on the Church leaves out many others
who share in the shame and the blame -- the families that abandoned their daughters to such treatment, the society that sought to be free from "sinful" women, those who used the cheap labor for their own profit.
Henri Nouwen once wrote about the story of the Prodigal Son, that it is difficult to stop being the prodigal without becoming the judgmental elder brother. That is, when we do not recognize ourselves as sinners, we fail to see others as worthy of God's love. In The Magdalene Sisters it is certainly true of the nuns and the church in general. They treat the women in their care with contempt, arrogance and self-righteousness.
I think that Peter Mullan has also fallen prey to the mindset of the elder brother. His treatment of the Church is just as full of contempt and arrogance. There are sins that need to be acknowledged and repentance to be done, but his broad condemnation of the Church as a whole is very like the way the nuns treated their charges. Both the nuns and Mullan treat the sinful and the innocent with the same assumption that they are vile and sinful.
To be sure, the Catholic Church is an easy target these days. The scandals of pedophile priests are in the headlines. Last year the film El Crimen de Padre Amaro showed a fallen priesthood. The Magdalene Sisters also carries an anti-Catholic bias. It is important to bring to view the failings of the church so that corrections and repentance can take place when needed. It is also important to note that even the Church is a sinful institution
in need of and reliant on God's grace. To condemn without an understanding of that need for grace or without an understanding that the sin does not define the Church is as prideful and self-righteous as all elder brothers. |
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