Rating: 
Summary: A stomach punch to the Catholic Church
Review: I'd heard about these Magdalene Laundries, so I wasn't keen on seeing a movie that promised to be a miserable experience. But I finally forced myself. The movie was as unnerving as I thought it would be. As an atheist, I was already aggravated enough at religion. This movie kicked it up a notch. From the start, the question that constantly ran through my mind was, Where was God through all this? I already knew the answer, but by the end, all viewers knew the answer as well. If the American priest sex scandal put the Church up against the ropes, then this film delivered the knockout punch. Not a single sympathetic character among anyone in power. I give much praise to everyone involved in the production. The writing, directing, cinematography and acting were all fantastic. Geraldine McEwan was superb in the key role of Sister Bridget. Mullan did a perfect job of capturing the cultural spirit of that age and place. The cruelty was beautifully understated most of the time. It was the status quo for that milieu. There were a few sadistic nuns, but I sensed most of the nuns were simply uncaring. What really burned me wasn't the nuns but the cruel uncaring nature of the relatives who consigned the girls to that place. But again, it was the status quo. We watched as the girls comtemplated breakouts through the movie. By the end, Bernadette's "We have nothing to lose" argument became irrefutable. It was the logic of a lifer in a slave labor camp. Savage bits of irony are sprinkled throughout the movie, such as the "God Is Good" headboard and Margaret's final confrontation with Sister Bridget. Some people don't like the rebellious escape at the end, but I thought it was a needed catharsis. If you wanted a more hopeless, dismal ending, just think of all the other girls still stuck in the Laundries until 1996. There's your true dismal ending. Lest you think Mullan was unduly harsh on the Church, the original documentary "Sex In A Cold Place" is included. The "fictional" film is based on cold hard fact. This isn't a movie I plan to watch twice, but I'm glad I saw it once. We atheists may watch it with a certain smugness, but more importantly, it should be mandatory viewing for all devout Christians and Catholics.
Rating:
Summary: Another True and Shocking Story Of The Holy Catholic Church!
Review: For much of the 20th century in Ireland, the Roman Catholic Church operated a string of laundries, the Magdalene Asylums, where very young women accused of "moral crimes" were sent
to work and repent of their evil ways in a cathartic vision of cleansing the soul while cleaning the laundry. These so-called "moral crimes" were broadly defined as becoming pregnant, getting
raped or even flirting with boys or being overly attractive and thus committing the sin of vanity. In the asylum's history, over 30,000 women were incarcerated, endured the Catholic Churches discipline systems and many died there. Often sexually abused and assaulted by priests, sexually humiliated, assaulted, shamed and beaten within an inch of their lives by their masochistic caretakers, the nuns - those "sweet sisters of mercy". As a shocker, The last of these horrendous Catholic laundries closed in 1996.
Scottish actor-writer-director Peter Mullan sets the story in 1964, the high-water mark for tension between our modern society and old-line Catholicism. The story centers on three very young women who were surreptitiously marched off to repent and be slaves for life to the Holy Catholic Church and their "pious" service of community.
Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is raped by her cousin at a family wedding and both of her parents place her in the "care" of their village priest and ship her off to the Magelene Laundries to avoid that horrible stigma of shameful family embarrassment; Rose (Dorothy Duffy) is an unwed mother forced by her mother, father and Holy Father to give her baby boy up for adoption, placing him in the Catholic orphanage system, and Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) is a Catholic orphanage young and beautiful teenaged girl deemed loose just because she is so pretty, fun and talks to boys.
All three are sent to a Magdalene laundry outside Dublin, where conditions would make the dusty prison farm in "Cool Hand Luke" look like a virtual health spa. These young women are worked 12 to 14 hours a day, 364 days a year (except Christmas, God bless) without any pay, viciously beaten for even speaking out of turn and, in one most disturbing scene, trotted around naked and ridiculed by the nuns. Overseeing the place is Highhanded Sister Bridget, a witch in a wimpole, well played by the British veteran Geraldine MacEwan.
The other inmates of the Holy Catholic Church are a varied lot. The tragic figure of the mentally disabled, sexually assaulted, and committed Crispina played by Eileen Walsh in an earth shattering performance really stands out as the best performance in the cast, in my humble opinion. The nuns are given some depth by director, Mullan- Sister Bridget is shown as a whirling devilish mean mother superior one moment, but capable of gushing tears at a Christmas Day screening of "The Bells of St. Mary's." What is truly unbelievable and disquieting in "The Magdalene Sisters" is how the Irish families of the prisoners aided and abetted such cruel treatment of their own flesh and blood. When one girl, Una, successfully escapes the laundry, she is beaten within an inch of her life and is dragged back by her father (oddly played by the director, Mullan), who verbally and physically abuses Una every step of the way. Una is handed over to Sister Bernadette and the sister shaves all of Una's beautiful hair off of her beaten and bloodied head which was a regular action taken by the nuns.
In Mullan's portrait of institutionalized shame and suffering, and a society's uniquely cruel form of sexual repression, "The Magdalene Sisters" is a hard pill to take, but certainly worth it for its outpouring of overcoming, raw rage and defiance on the screen. And if the fact-based movie weren't enough to shock, also included is the British documentary "Sex In A Cold Climate" which interviews several Irish women who were imprisioned during the time of the Catholic Church's REIGN OF TERROR! The documentary exposes even more sick, sad and twisted goings on that the movie didn't even touch upon... Highly Recommended and Happy Pondering!
Rating:
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.
Rating:
Summary: The Magdalene Sisters
Review: Decades ago in Ireland women were sent to these unorthodox laundries for commiting sex related crimes.
In the film we meet Margaret: a girl who's raped at a wedding and (as rediculous as it sounds) is sent to the Magdalene laundry for allowing herself to get raped. Later, we meet Bernadette who's sent to the laundry on accusations of being a "temptress". Finally, there's Rose (or Patricia as she's called in the convent) for giving birth to a child "outside wedlock", or without getting married first. All of these were typical crimes or sins that women were sent to these convents for. The nuns provided nothing but abuse and humilliation for them. "The Magdalene Sisters" is a gritty and graphic portrayal of life in an laundry convent which is the equivalent of being in a concentration camp. The last Magdalene laundry didn't shut down until 1996!
The theme of the story: Survival of the fittest? No: Survival of the spirit.
Rating:
Summary: Another horror story from the evil Catholic Empire
Review: The Magdalene Sisters in an infuriating movie based on real events in 20th century Ireland. Young girls were taken taken into custody by the Catholic Church. The girls' crime was any type of sexual behavior or any hint of sexuality as in the case of the girl who was imprisoned for having a pretty face.
Girls were taken into the Magdalene Laundries where they were imprisoned without benefit of trial, forced to do hard labor, brutally beaten by nuns and raped by priests. The Catholic Church does not treat any of things things as either sins in the church or crimes in the civil justice system.
Of course, the Catholics don't brutilize only girls. In recent years it has been revealed that hundreds of young boys have been sexually assaulted by priests. Today, The Catholic Church continues to hide evidence and protect the priests who perpetrated the abuse. They continue their war against the world's youth while falsely claiming to be Christians.
Amazingly, there are thousands of families that send their children to Catholic schools in spite of that church's unrepentant abuse of children. What kind of society are we becoming when we are willing to sacrifice our children in the name of religion?
Rating:
Summary: just reports, never judges
Review: It's hard to imagine a Western society allowing for such unsettling injustices as pictured in 'The Magdalene Sisters'. They did happen, nevertheless. Only forty years ago. Even more so, they were considered legal.
This utterly sad movie just reports, and never judges. Its greatness is further enhanced by excellent acting. All set against a lively background of 1960's Ireland, a society strongly dominated by the Roman Catholic Church.
Rating:
Summary: In darkness lurks evil
Review: The story of young girls imprisoned for life, raped by priests and brutally abused by nuns, ended only in 1994. In a Catholic country, apparently government officials were not moved to investigate the rumors of what went on behind the dark stone walls.
Even more recent is the wholesale disclosure (although it has always been an ill-kept secret) of priestly molestation of children who had the poor fortune to be caught in the cellar of the house of worship--children imprisoned in darkness in another way by threats of god's vengeance if they "told" and the disbelief, if they broke down and told anyway, of parents who chose the execrable "men of god" over their own children. And helped preserve the evil lurking in the dark church basements.
And now two Amish girls have emerged from the secretive life of that cult to report repeated rape by their many brothers and molestation by those brothers of younger sisters, as young as four. This community was once lavishly praised by the U.S. Supreme Court for its "goodness," in a unique ruling that exempted the Amish from mandatory education (where the physical and sexual brutality toward them might become known). The cult cut the girls off completely from everyone and everything they had known, but not before the mother of one young girl had every one of the child's teeth pulled in retaliation because she reported the years of rapes. Punishment for the brothers who raped their little sister, among them, hundreds of times was mostly trivial, and many were not punished at all. At the trial of two of the worst offenders, the "community" sat in court and wept--for the men! who were, and still are, highly respected elders making religious and secular decisions for their congregation. The judge scathingly reprimanded them for showing no shred of feeling for the victim, who had been raped since early childhood. The main issue as the cult saw it was that it is "our way," and the courts of the State of Wisconsin and the United States had no right to interfere. In the darkness...
An organization that lives in secrecy and conceals its wrongdoing is a cult, and the Catholic church is not an exception. Where there is darkness, evil thrives. Only by opening every dark corner of such organizations to the light can institutionalized brutalization of children be controlled.
This, I think, is the message to be taken from the story of the Magdalene Sisters--be always alert to examine secrecy. Good thrives in light; only evil requires the darkness.
Rating: 
Summary: chilling
Review: This movie chronicles several years in the lives of 4 Irish girls forced into indefinite slave labor in a Magdalene Asylum, a work camp run by catholic convents to help purge young girls of their sins. In most cases the sinners are unwed mothers, but some are punished simply for being too pretty, or for being the victims of rape.
As one would expect, this is a gut-wrenching story, detailing verbal, physical, and sexual abuse of girls who were already victims. It is a classic story (too common in history) of punishing the victim of the crime instead of the criminal.
Most interesting is that unlike most stories of oppression and inhumanity against women, most of the atrocities against the women in the movie are committed by women: the nuns running the convent. If you weren't afraid of nuns before watching this movie you will be afterwards. Also shocking is how recent the events described happened: the story starts in 1964, and at the end of the film we are informed that the last Magdalene asylum was closed in 1994.
This is an important story that needed to be told, and an important chapter of history that should not be forgotten. But viewers be warned: expect to be devastated after watching it.
Rating: 
Summary: "Stressful"
Review: 01/09/05 Although the movie, which near the end "showed a human side of the "Nun In Charge" prior to showing a couple of scenes from the Bing Crosby, Ingrid Berman movie which was about "Nuns In America" entitled "The Belles of Saint Mary",where she mentions she'd made up her mind to be either a nun or a cowboy like those in the "Westens" she liked so much as a child; the scenes stuck to the plot of "harsh life within the "convent walls" for these lay persons, who entered as young persons due to some unfortunate circumstance which made their families feel the "Magdalene Asylum" was the answer to their families problems as to what do you do with a teenage girl whom the family no longer feels pride in.The Magdalen Order of Nuns had one mandate to keep these girls until some adult came to release them and the movie did have one case of a brother who did come 4 (four) years later ..and was asked by his sister what took him so long, to which the 18 year old told his sister, I was busy "growing up" ...The convent appeared to be run like what the public is led to believe is the atmosphere of "maximum security" prisons which hold "only dangerous inmates" vs an asylumn(haven) for "wayward girls".. The only sensibility to the movie is remembering 1. that theatre and movie scripts embelish and exaggerate on reality 2. that nothing wrong that did happen to the girls can be considered justifiable 3. that these situations happened in a time when people knew no better, and considered "corporal punishment & brute force" as the only way to have order with those they had labeled disorderly
Rating:
Summary: MORE EVIDENCE OF CATHOLIC GARBAGE AND RELIGIOUS REPRESSION
Review: YET AGAIN THE RELIGIOUS NAZI'S & ZEALOTS HAVE SHOWN THEIR TRUE COLORS OF REPRESSION AND CONTROL.
SAY THREE HAIL MARYS AND TOSS OUT THE FRIGGIN'
CROSS AND ALL THAT IT DEPICTS. THERE IS NO GOD, ONLY THE DELUSIONS OF MANY MEN AND WOMEN WORLDWIDE.
GOD DID NOT CAUSE THE TSUNAMI, IT WAS A GEOLOGICAL & SCIENCE RELATED EVENT THAT CAUSED THE EARTHQUAKE AND THE RESULTING TSUNAMI...OR THE GODS ARE MAD AT ROBERTSON, FALWELL AND G.W.B.
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