The Magdalene Sisters Review
by Susan Granger (ssg722 AT aol DOT com)August 4th, 2003
Susan Granger's review of "The Magdalene Sisters" (Miramax Films)
Why has Scottish writer/director/actor Peter Mullan's hard-hitting depiction of brutality within Ireland's Catholic Magdalene convent schools has drawn the ire of the Vatican? Because it vividly depicts the jail-like conditions and psychological violence that some 30,000 young Irish women allegedly suffered in the strict Magdalene Asylums that have now been abolished.
Until the mid-1990s, the Sisters of the Magdalene Order operated a very profitable laundry business, utilizing outcast or "wayward" girls as their unpaid labor force. This tale, set in 1964, reveals the grim stories of three of those unfortunates who arrive at the convent on the same day.
There's Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), who was raped by a drunken cousin during a wedding celebration and is incarcerated as a "sinner." Rose (Dorothy Duffy) has given birth to an illegitimate child; when a manipulative priest talks her into giving up her son for adoption, her parents send her off in disgrace. And Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) is an unruly orphan whose beauty attracts too much attention from the young boys; branded as a temptress, she's dispatched to be disciplined. Stripped naked to exercise each morning, they're sadistically bullied and beaten by the nuns, particularly Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan). Most pathetic is feeble-minded Crispina (Eileen Walsh) who tries to communicate with her son through a St. Christopher medal.
Mullan's compelling concept came from a TV documentary, "Sex in a Cold Climate." But in the intensity of his anger, Mullan indicts all of the nuns; if even one nun was misguided, guilty and repentant, the film would be even better. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Magdalene Sisters" is a powerful 9. Certainly, it's the most controversial film so far this year.
More on 'The Magdalene Sisters'...
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