The Magdalene Sisters
In a place that defied belief their only hope was each other.
Peter Mullen’s second film is a shocking and provocative drama that, while being emotionally manipulative at times, highlights important issues of personal freedom and religious hypocrisy.
The Irish Magdalene Asylums were run by nuns and, in theory, provided a means for “fallen women” to find redemption through prayer and hard work.
In reality, they were shockingly brutal prisons, run for profit, in which the nuns used physical violence, psychological torture and an ever present threat of damnation to keep their charges isolated from each other and under control. An estimated 30,000 girls went through this system for their so called “sexual improprieties”, forced to work in silence and without pay - effectively slaves.
The film itself centres on four main characters, three of whom are introduced in the opening scenes of the film.
Margaret (Ann-Marie Duff) is raped by her cousin at a wedding. When she tells what has happened her family carts her off to the Magdalene asylum.
Orphan, Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) is sent to the asylum after the orphan authorities determine that her flirting with the boys at the gates makes her a temptress.
Rose, an unmarried mother, is pressed to put her new born baby up for adoption and promptly carted off to the asylum.
What comes through very strongly is that the families sending their daughters to these asylums weren’t doing so out of a concern for their spiritual or moral health, but in order to save themselves from being embarrassed by a difficult situation. As such, the Magdalene asylums were nothing more than a convenient way of putting difficult situations both out of sight and out of mind.
On arrival, the three have their situation spelled out to them by Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), the authoritarian fundamentalist who runs the asylum. Sister Bridget could have easily been portrayed as one-note villain, but she is a lot more complex than this, her moral certainty being more of a crutch to allow her to avoid facing the the hypocrisy inherent in her position.
Even under a regime of enforced silence and brutal physical and mental torture, the three women start to forge tentative friendships along with Crispina (Eileen Walsh) who is an inmate before them. Crispina is not the sharpest knife in the drawer and a victim throughout - when Margaret discovers that Crispina is being sexually abused by the local priest and takes action on her behalf things backfire horribly for Crispina.
The one truly strong character in the film is Bernadette who, on recognising the hopelessness of the inmates’ situation doesn’t buckle under but instead starts looking with renewed vigour for a way to escape.
Angry and compassionate without becoming hysterical, “The Magdalene Sisters” is a damning indictment not only of the Catholic Church, but also of the hypocrisy and fundamentalism that, even now, leads to far too many people being repressed in order to preserve an unjustified status quo.
The last of the Magdalene convents closed in 1996.
Sunday 06 Apr 2003 | Paul Pritchard | Drama, Quick Takes
I absolutely LOVED this film. It’s one of those films that touches you at the very core, and you leave with this feeling in your chest of having seen one of those rare, cinema masterpieces.