The Magdalene Sisters

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Summary: Why fear hell when you're already there?
Review: As if the Holy Roman Catholic Church hasn't had enough PR problems lately, now there's THE MAGDALENE SISTERS.

Based on true events, this film follows the experiences of three young Irish woman thrust into a Magdalene Asylum, administered by the Catholic Church through the Sisters of Mercy (aka THE MAGDALENE SISTERS), for perceived sexual immorality. Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), who dares cry "rape" after she's sexually assaulted by a cousin at a family wedding. Rose, who gives birth to an illegitimate child. Bernadette, already in an orphanage, who's just an outrageous flirt with the lads. In the asylum, the three join others, some having been detained for a lifetime, in a brutal 24/7 regimen of prayer, work, and sleep without contact with the outside world. The work involved 8-10 hours per day of unpaid toil, i.e. atonement for sin, in the institution's sweat shop laundry - a business that earned considerable money for the Church. The prisoners - for that's what they truly are - endure bad food, physical beatings, sexual abuse, psychological trauma, and abject humiliation at the hands of the nuns and priests.

The Magdalene Asylums were a feature of 20th century Ireland, places of incarceration reserved for "fallen" women, a flexible term that included anyone considered to be in moral peril. The plot of this film takes place in the early 1960s and stretches over four to five years. (The last Irish asylum was closed in 1996. It's estimated that approximately 30,000 women were incarcerated in these facilities over the decades. Interestingly, it was the advent of household washers and dryers that contributed to the end of the asylum laundries.)

Have no misconceptions, the plot of this devastating and emotionally powerful film is unrelentingly gritty. There's little happiness to be had by the three young women, brilliantly played by the three named actresses, and their fellow sufferers. Also superb in a supporting role is Geraldine McEwan as Sister Bridget, the asylum's manic Mother Superior, who loves old western films and the laundry's cash revenue nearly as much as her God, and who apparently harbors a deep hatred of female sexuality. And Eileen Walsh as Crispina, another unwed mother, who barely comprehends her trespass, and whose fate is achingly tragic.

THE MAGDALENE SISTERS was filmed in Dumfries, Scotland, rather than Ireland to avoid political opposition and controversy. The shock to the viewer is that such institutionalized cruelty could have existed in a modern, Western society until so recently. After all, we're not talking about repression of women in the Taliban's Afghanistan here.

Writer/Director Peter Mullan included in the cast, as Sister Augusta, a woman named Phyllis McMahon, a former nun in a Magdalene Asylum. When asked by Mullen what went so wrong in the asylums that nuns did these things, she answered:

"Absence of doubt. We had no doubts about what we did." The rationale of fanatics everywhere.

I was born and raised a Catholic, and "fell away" in young adulthood. THE MAGDALENE SISTERS made me angry. Without doubt, it also merits Oscar consideration in the Best Foreign Film category.

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Summary: Bergman goes to Ireland: remarkably executed
Review: The Magdalene Sisters is one of the better movies of the year. It holds within it such emotional girth, such a sympathy with these girls and what they go through in such a society that holds the Catholic belief system as the absolute truth, that by the time you leave the theater, like it or dis-like it, you'll feel drained. Along with a heart-wrenching relentlessness by writer/director Peter Mullan in revealing the details of the nun's cruelty and coldness, there are a number of very good performances here. Geraldine McEwan's Sister Bridget, head Sister of the Magdalene reformatory, is on par with Nurse Ratched for being one of the most frightening of dominating female figures; Eileen Walsh's Crispina/Harriet is possibly the most touching of the lot of imprisoned women and could garner an Oscar nomination; Nora-Jane Noone's Bernadette is a true balancing act between rebellious spirit and trapped creature; and the other players, including Anne-Marrie Duff and Dorothy Duffy add splendid supporting work.

As fellow film connoisseurs know, Ingmar Bergman was renown for most of his films dealing with faith, the loss of it, and/or the absence of God and the pain that seeps through in living in such a world that doesn't question it. While these questions weren't as forward and evident in this film as they were in Bergman's masterpieces, often Mullan subtly brings these questions to light as the film progresses: if God is pounded over and over and over into these girl's heads, that they are here because they need to repent for their "mortal sins" (such as being raped, flirting, having children out of wedlock), and they are subjected to physical, sexual, and mental abuse by those who should be compassionate, life-long devotees to the faith, where is God? This question actually comes to a big head in a scene that at first shows itself to be rather amusing when a priest gets a poison Ivy rash, and then Crispina, who got it from him in the worst way, shouts out over and over YOU'RE NOT A MAN OF GOD, and thus is silenced away to a mental asylum. Indeed, this is the part of the film where the question gets the most light, and it's the most harrowing scene in the movie among others and is one of the most powerful in movies this year.

The only liability is the climatic ending to which is something against a Bergman=esque logic, and while I won't reveal it here, it tends to go to an (appropriate) timing that's akin to Cuckoo's Nest. Personally, I felt the film should have ended with the Bergman logic instead of the Kesey spirit, but that's neither here nor there, since the bulk of the film in and of itself is contains some passionate drama, and to those who see it will not only get an eye-opening view to the old-time (if old-time is up until seven years ago) Catholic ways, but also to the great dangers of control over human life.

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Summary: Dark but brilliant
Review: 3 girls who are rejected by their families are sent to The Magdeline Sisters to clean up their tawdry lives and find out that the Sisters aren't as holy as they would appear.

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Summary: The horror story of the Magdalene asylums in Ireland
Review: With all the publicity and criticism swirling around the best selling novel "The Da Vinci Code" one of the historical corrections that has emerged is the idea that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute. The idea came from a sermon given at the end of the 6th century in which Pope Gregory the Great characterized Mary Magdalene as a harlot and has endured for centuries. One of the ways in which the idea that Magdalene was the archetypal "fallen woman" was perpetuated was through the Magdalene Laundries that flourished in Ireland under the Sisters of Mercy for most of the 20th century. In the prologue of this 2002 film we meet three young Irish girls who take different paths to end up being sent to one of the Magdalene asylums and since only one of the three truly qualifies as a "fallen woman," we appreciate the grim irony that there reputations had fallen prey to hysteria over sex in the same way that Mary Magdalene has been libeled by history.

The DVD of this film includes an original expose "Sex in a Cold Climate," the 1998 documentary that served as the inspiration for Peter Mullan's film. My strong recommendation is to watch the film first, because otherwise you will be thinking about how what was talked about in the documentary is being shown in the film. However, the documentary is quite effective in its own way, even thought it consists mostly of four old women talking about what happened to them almost half a century ago and telling their heartbreaking stories. If anything, the documentary will outrage you more than the film, another reason for watching it afterwards.

"The Magdalene Sisters" was denounced by the Catholic League as being anti-Catholic, and my obvious response after watching the film is that if this is what the Catholic church in Ireland was doing to these women, then it deserves to be attacked. However, it seems clear that even without explicitly making the case that this film is specifically an indictment of Irish Catholics, which extends to not just the cruel nuns running this asylum. This is a culture than blames young women for being rapped, considers flirting by a young girl to be the equivalent of actual fornication, and where parents will brutally turn their backs on their daughters for their sins. The nuns have their moments, but the true moment of despair comes when a father drags his daughter back to this evil place telling her "you killed us" and threatening to cripple her if she dares to ever return to the place she still thinks is her home.

We are introduced to three women in the opening of the film, Margaret (Ann-Marie Duff), Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), and Rose (Dorothy Duffy), although when they come to the asylum there is a fourth girl who is equally prominent, the simpleminded Crispina (Eileen Walsh). This is a film about surviving a harrowing experience, but since over 30,000 young girls were given over to serve in slavery in these places, of course not everyone got out and was able to claim some sort of life in the real world. The fact that Mullan uses unfamiliar faces, the exception being Geraldine McEwan as the chief harpy, Sister Bridget, works to make the situation seem more really, since we cannot think of these young actresses as anyone other than the young unfortunates that they are playing.

At face value "The Magdalene Sisters" is reminiscent of your standard prison film, with the girls trying to survive and win some small victories against the nuns and the system. But for most of the film every time the girls get a little of their own back, Mullan makes sure they are subjected to some new indignity. A happy ending is only a relative term in a film such as this. Some have charged that the portrait of the nuns in this film is rather one sided since they show no compassion towards their charges. But this was a world that did not allow compassion towards these women and the asylum was really no different from what they faced outside its walls. Still, to think of nuns in Ireland operating with the ruthless efficiency of the Taliban is rather upsetting. Fortunately the last of these laundries closed; but not until 1996, two years before a documentary exposed their sins to the world.

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Summary: STUPENDOUS! WRENCHING! MOVING! PROVOCATIVE!!!
Review: Let's begin with the Catholic Church "condemning" this film. Come on! It reminds me of when the now-classic "Life of Brian" had been "condemned" when it was first released. Had the selfrighteous, would be censors actually taken a close look at 'Brian, with some intelligence, they'd have seen it as a rather mild spoof which -- ironically -- skewers terrorist groups rather than it did Catholicism or any other faith.

The story: The director Mullan follows the stories of four unfortunates: the defiant Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), who had been raped by her cousin but did not get pregnant; Rose (Dorothy Duffy), the kind-hearted girl who had a baby out of wedlock and longed to keep it; slow-witted Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who had been raped and bore a son; and orphan Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), who's sexually naive but flirtatious are all brought to one of the Magdalene Asylums in Ireland. Better known as Laundries, the girls-young women msut WORK away their womanly "sins." These girls who had been shunned by Irish society, and forced into a slave's existence, are further forced into more sexually and physically abusive situations by those who were supposed to be shepherding and protecting them.

Ingeneously, the simple sentence "You are not a man of God" is repeated 27 times in Peter Mullan's MAGDALINE SISTERS. Shouted by a witless girl at a buck-naked priest running into the woods -- and for such a duration, such anger and frustration -- its repatition may be one of the most powerful scenes recorded on film. This also reveal's writer-director Mullan's intention to produce a dramatic expose on the mistreatment of girls and young women at the hands of the Catholic Church in 1960s Ireland.

The crimes visited on these girls, forced into lifelong slavery merely for being female, is unforgivable. What makes this story all the more chilling is, in fact, the film is based in truth and actual events. These "Laundries" did exist, even until 1997. All over Ireland, they had violated women who were forced to sweat and slave their lives away for the Church. That's why telling this shameful story must be covered up!

Perhaps ironically, the writer-director doesn't have an axe to grind with the Church, in general. Certainly, anyone who's had dealings with the men and women who make up the Irish or other Catholic clergy know, the vast majority of these people are solid, giving and godly. But ragging the Church isn't Mullan's point. He was driven to concern himself with exposing the very worst of the bad apples by showing us the full range of their wickedness and God-aweful abuses brought down on these heart-wrenchingly defenseless Irish girls and women within the walls of the Church's "Laundries." The administration that had allowed such sinful and wicked crimes to be perpetrated in its name should turn its condemnations on its own sinners -- rather than try to punish the messenger of this dreadful story.

You will never forget this powerfully moving, must-see film.

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Summary: A Very Brave and Daring Film
Review: I just saw this very powerful film last night, and it will make you say, "Oh My God!" at least 27 times. It follows 3 young girls who were put in the Magdalene Laundries in the 1960s for "sinning" crimes (being a victim of rape, having a baby out of wedlock, or even just talking to boys). They recieved no pay and in return were given sexual harrassment by priests and nuns alike. They were forced to work labor 6 days a week, 52 weeks a year until the nuns let them out, a family member sends for you, or if you escape hell. It is pretty much an Irish and feminine version of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION with all hope drained from it. And it's all true.

This is a very rare film where it's a horror movie without it actually being a horror movie. I swear to God that you will be moved, thankful and angered by this film and that the last scene/epiloge will make you thankful to be free. The raw performances (Nora-Jane Noone is a real discovery-she's never acted before!- and is amazing especially in the last scene), the haunting combination of the strings and the piano score by Craig Armstron, and the strong work of Peter Mullans all make this film a gem that should not be missed.

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Summary: "What have we done to deserve this?"
Review: It is shocking to watch a movie that is based on a true story and that shows the events this one shows. In Ireland, until the end of the twentieth century, there were "nun schools" all over the country. Girls were abandoned there by their families or tutors entering a world of slavery, having to work doing laundry for outside contractors and being treated like prisoners in a labor farm. The director, Peter Mullan, did an outstanding job in conveying to the public the conditions in which the girls spent their hours, as well as depicting the eroding effect the situation had on their hopes, ambitions, and even basic personality traits.

The tale focuses on three female adolescents, who end up in the infamous reformatory for different reasons. Margaret is raped by her cousin on a family wedding, and when minutes after the fact she tells a friend, the "secret" is shared with everyone. Her father cannot stand the shame and hauls her off to her miserable destination. Bernadette is happy living in an orphanage, but she is also beautiful and enjoys the attention she is getting from the boys in the neighborhood. The director of the orphanage starts to get concerned and sends her away. Rose is a single mother who has just given birth to a beautiful baby. Her parents bring in a priest to convince her to give the baby up in adoption, and once she surrenders to their wishes, her reward is to pay a long visit to the nuns.

The motto of the Magdalene sisters is to deny pleasures and seek cleansing through non-stop working. Moreover, they force the girls to pray every night, and the discipline is worse than in the strictest military school. What makes things even scarier is that the sisters held adult women as "prisoners" too, since these individuals have lost all lucidity and have grown used to their way of living. Of course, while the recluses eat disgusting food, the nuns feast on delicacies and enjoy the money earned through the effort of others.

Most of the aspects of the movie are outstanding and the experience is ultimately enjoyable, but it is hard to swallow some of the things that happen to these girls. There are two performances that in my opinion shine well above the rest. Geraldine McEwan is so convincing in her role of Sister Bridget, that one hates her right away. Nora-Jane Noone plays Bernadette and does so very effectively, creating ambiguous feelings towards this character. Finally, the music in this production is worth mentioning and deserves high praise, with the song playing during the wedding in which Margaret is raped, being its best representative.

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Summary: Sad, shocking and touching
Review: This film would seem like a wild exaggeration, or a sort of Frank McCourt "Angela's Ashes" story, but the makers of "The Magdalene Sisters" saw fit to include the documentary "Sex in a Cold Climate"--the inspiration for the film as an extra on this DVD. So after watching the story of unwed mothers, too-pretty orphans and rape victims become the property of the Church, essentially forced labor in a laundry, you get to see the real women behind the story, too. Just in case you don't believe.

The Magdalene Asylums were built in the 19th century to house "wayward women", prostitutes and unwed mothers. By the 20th Century, they became a place to dump family embarrassments, unwed mothers and incorrigible girls. And in some cases, a place to hide rape victims to keep scandal from flying. The women were made to work from sun-up to sundown without pay and without hope of reprieve unless some sympathetic relative came to get them. The last asylum wasn't closed until 1996.

The story centers around four girls brought to the asylum for various sins, bearing a child out of wedlock, a rape and one girl who was just "too pretty" and who would doubtless end up in trouble. Lock her up for the sake of her soul, then. The nuns were brutal, beating the girls, cutting off their hair and ridiculing them. The scenes are shocking, like something out of a film about the Nazi Holocaust in a way--in the brutality of one group of people with complete power over another.

There are many sad scenes and sad ends here, but the film had bright spots--some of the girls managed to get out and salvage at least part of their lives. It's a story that had to be told, and the casting and filming are amazing, especially in light of the documentary that inspired the film. A must-see.

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Summary: Skewering the sacred cow.
Review: The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullan, 2002)

Mullan, whose turns in front of the camera lend greatness to such films as Session 9, My Name Is Joe, and Young Adam, here delivers his first directorial effort in five years. While the movie falls short in a number of areas, it certainly achieves its intended effect: inciting an almost murderous rage in its viewers.

The story centers around a particular Magdalene asylum (which one is never stated) to which, in 1964, three girls are sent for various things. They are Bernadette (Nor-Jane Noone of Ella Enchanted in her big screen debut), Margaret (Anne Marie Duff, recently in Enigma), and Rose (fellow first-timer Dorothy Duffy). The three of them try to survive as best they can. Among their fellow prisoners are the somewhat mentally challenged Crispina (Eileen Walsh, the title character in the recent Janice Beard: 45 Words a Minute), who ends up with as much screen time as any of the main characters. As the title suggests, though, the real main focus of the film is the sisters, led by the dictatorial Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan, portrayer of Lucia in "Mapp and Lucia"), and how they relentlessly brutalize the women under their purview.

Mullan obviously has an axe to grind against Mother Church. While this is usually a bad thing, he steps back and refrains from editorializing, leaving the stories to speak for themselves; the film is refreshingly free of overbearing claptrap one expects to find in anti-religious movies. That said, the horror of what the girls endure is more than enough to put one off one's feed for a week or two. (...) it is quite obvious the stories of these three girls are based completely on three of the subjects of the documentary.)

Here, however, is the film's main failing; it depicts these horrors without terribly much context. The storyline is full of gaping holes in both plot and temporality; various scenes are set up and executed, then never referenced again, despite being things that would change a person's life. In other words, in short, the movie suffers somewhat from sitcom syndrome; you can do anything you want to your characters, but not terribly much changes. The characters are well drawn, and the actresses play the parts very well, but they're not given terribly much for the characters to do. You can empathize with them, but there's not much for bonding purposes.

The end result is more a catalogue of brutality than it is a watchable film. It is, to say the least, a document of deep importance. It needs to be seen, and those responsible need to be punished. The problem is, it's not really all that watchable. ** ½

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Summary: WORDS ALONE CANNOT DESCRIBE THIS TRAGEDY!!!!!
Review: I just finished watching this movie and I am extremely disturbed. The story is filled with so much hate and so much blatant bigotry that my hands are actually shaking as I sit here and type this. No movie has ever touched me as "The Magdalene Sisters" did.

First, let me just say that all the men in this movie are disgusting, repugnant COWARDS!! The men can do no wrong while the ladies have to sacrifice for no apparent reason. That is terribly unjust.

The Magdalene House is a jail-like home. It's run by pedophile priests that enjoy taking advantage of handicapped ladies and sadistic nuns that get personal pleasure out of abusing the ladies that live there.

The movie revolves around 3 young ladies that were sent to a Magdalene House; each for different reasons. One of the young ladies was raped, another was too pretty, and another had a child out of wedlock. What exactly was their crime that caused them to be locked up for years and years you might be asking? After all, they were being punished and told that they were good-for-nothing sinners! Their crime was: female sexuality! Apparently, the Catholic Church of Ireland found that to be the ultimate crime. And, as a result they punished these poor young ladies mercilessly.

There is only one shining light in this very evil movie. That is at the very end when two of the young ladies escape. They were courageous enough to get out and free themselves of all beatings, hate, and sexual abuse.

Thousands of women more were enslaved in these concentration camps until their pitiful deaths. Words along cannot describe this tragedy.

This movie is a true story which took place in Ireland. Thank you to Peter Mullen for making a movie about this topic.