THE MAGDALENE SISTERS (15)

Phoenix Picture House to Feb 27th 2003

Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe), in his second feature film, has managed to create a compelling and provoking drama that hits the audiences with its angry, bitter intensity. The story (set around 1964) is about the experiences of the 'inmates' kept in the profit-making laundries throughout Ireland operated by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order that used young women as virtual slaves. An estimated 30,000 girls went through this system, sent to Magdalene Asylums for their so-called "improper sexual behaviour" before the last of these laundries closed in 1996. These women were kept in appalling exploitative conditions and driven like slaves, forced to work in silence seven days a week in laundries without pay and treated in the most harsh manner. The asylums were named after Mary Magdalene, the prostitute who repented and was forgiven by Jesus.
Mullan's screenplay loosely derives from a Channel Four documentary, "Sex in a Cold Climate," that was in turn based on extensive research and interviews with women imprisoned in such facilities.

In the opening scenes, three of the main characters are introduced. Rose (Dorothy Duffy) conceives a child outside of wedlock, Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is raped by her cousin at a family wedding and Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) dares to look at the boys standing outside the gates of her schoolyard. For their so-called indiscretions, the would-be Magdalenes are shipped away by their shamed families. At the Magdalene laundry house, the girls are placed under Sister Bridget's (Geraldine McEwan) harsh, humiliating supervision who runs the place with an iron hand and comes across as almost sinister in her ways. One can't help wondering at places whether Mullan could have made the plot a bit more complex by showing at least one nun in a different light, rather than making them all appear as unrepentant sadists. The performances are very powerful and deserve full credit in giving the film its sharp insight into the characters' lives and analysis of the system.

There is no discernible structure to the film, but perhaps this brings out the fact that there was no logic to the practices of the institution of Magdalene Asylums. The seduction of religion comes across as so great that it could lead people to perpetuate such practices and make strictly catholic families consign their loved ones to such a horrifying fate. While the inside shots are dominated with shades of black and brown, the exterior scenes are bathed in natural light as if to create a starker contrast and to highlight the dark, sad lives inside the laundries. It is no surprise that the film has met with much criticism from the Catholic Church. But Mullan's angry Magdalene Sisters seeks one out from the depths of mundane complacency with its activist edge, forcing the audience to question not just religious fundamentalism but also the terrible forms human nature can take. The film has deservedly won the Venice International Film Festival's top prize, the Golden Lion.

Definitely worth watching!

Gaytri Singh 14/02/03