Film Review: The Magdalene Sisters
Scott Peter’s Mullen’s Expose of the Irish Magdalene Laundries
Dec 23, 2008
Scott Peter Mullen’s The Magdalene Sisters stirred up no end of controversy when it was screened at the Venice Film Festival. At the time it was said to be the epitome of foolishness to give a film which exposes and denounces long standing Catholic institutions its first screening in a country which is home to the leader of the Catholic Church. However, hindsight has shown it to be one of the most successful marketing strategies since they started selling pies at football matches. Without the media frenzy caused by its Venice entry, The Magdalene Sisters could well have, possibly deservedly, slipped below the radar of the cinema going public.
Life in the Magdalene Laundries
The film begins in Dublin in 1963 with Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) attending her sister’s wedding reception. As the guests watch a group of priests playing a tune worthy of being an Irish Eurovision entry, Margaret is raped by her cousin in a storeroom just yards away from help. Afterwards she tells her sister who tells her father who tells his brother who tells a priest and so on. Although this can all be seen happening, it is not possible to hear what is being said, reflecting the wall of silence surrounding the issue of rape at that time.
The action then turns to Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), a pretty girl who lives in a Catholic orphanage, her only friends being the weirdest set of Siamese twins since The Shining. The nuns who run the orphanage watch disapprovingly as Bernadette dares to talk through the fence with some local boys. The next day Bernadette is gone from the orphanage, the twins find her bed empty but aren’t particularly concerned once they discover that she has left her hair brush behind for them.
The next girl to be introduced is Rose (Dorothy Duffy), who is in hospital having just given birth to an illegitimate son. A priest assures her that she will be ‘rejected and scorned by all decent society’ and then takes the baby away for adoption.
As all three girls arrive at the Magdalene Laundry, the credits roll and a disturbingly long list of girls who were sent to that and other laundries across Ireland appears. As soon as the working conditions which the girls will have to endure are exposed, it becomes clear that this film will not be a rehash of Sister Act. The girls are informed that they have been sent to the Laundry to make their peace with God but just how washing some Irish bloke’s old Y-fronts will cleanse their souls is not explained.
The Magdalene Sisters
The film then descends into every cliché and hypocrisy that has ever been attributed to the Catholic Church. The nuns count the money that they have made from the girl’s work as a statue of Jesus (bizarrely positioned next to a photograph of JFK) looks on. A priest sexually abuses one of the girls with hilarious consequences for him and tragic results for her. There is even a bit of homoeroticism thrown in when the nuns make the girls exercise naked. A great effort has clearly been made to be controversial.
Despite the incredibly serious nature of the story, the film does contain some wonderfully comic moments, the priest’s home movies and the anointing of the new washing machines with Holy water being good examples. It was also reassuring to note that, as one nun comments, Westerns have gone the way of the Devil. It’s comforting to know that other people have noticed there was something uncanny about John Wayne.
The Magdalene Sisters could have been an incredibly moving film but, despite all of its efforts to shock and provoke, it didn’t really inspire any feelings for the characters involved. The film would have been scandalous twenty years ago but with modern cinema and recent real life scandals involving the Catholic clergy, it somehow managed to make an interesting and important story feel stale and even passé.
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