director/screenwriter
Peter Mullan
producer
Frances Higson
cinematographer
Nigel Willoughby
music
Craig Armstrong
editor
Colin Monie
cast
Geraldine McEwan (Sister Bridget)
Anne-Marie Duff (Margaret)
Nora-Jane Noone (Bernadette)
Dorothy Duffy (Rose/Patricia)
Eileen Walsh (Crispina/Harriet)
Mary Murray (Una)
Britta Smith (Katy)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 119m
u.k.
release: 2/21/03
u.s.
release: 8/1/03
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
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Any movie denounced by the
Vatican probably has at least something going for it, but The
Magdalene Sisters -- which sheds light on a particularly
shameful part of the Catholic Church's history -- has much more
to recommend it than simple iconoclasm. Until fairly recently,
the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland ran the Magdalene Asylums, essentially
slave-labor prisons for "wayward" girls. To qualify
as wayward, you might have a child out of wedlock, or be raped
by your cousin and watch your family turn its back on you, or
simply be seen talking to boys too much at the orphanage. Those
are the "sins" committed by the three lead characters:
Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), the rape victim; Bernadette (Nora-Jane
Noone), the orphan; and Rose (Dorothy Duffy), who not only loses
her newborn son but, upon arrival at Magdalene, her name. (There's
already a Rose there, so she's called by her communion name Patricia.)
Miramax is selling this as
a triumph-of-the-human-spirit wedge of cheese, but it's a much
tougher piece of work than that. Writer/director Peter Mullan,
an actor making his second feature (he appears here as the viciously
unforgiving father of a girl who has attempted escape), delivers
a sobering drama with drab gray colors and symmetrical compositions
right out of a Kubrick film; this is The Shawshank Redemption
without the inspirational muck that always mars that film for
me. There's very little redemption here, only suffering, humiliation,
and the desperate need for escape. The prisoners here, after
all, have done nothing much wrong except being female. To color
even slightly outside the line of good-girlhood is to invite
expulsion from the family and a hard cot at the asylum.
The Magdalene girls are required
to work long hours every day of the year; the three protagonists
toil in the laundry. As punishment for various infractions, the
girls are beaten or have their heads shaved or, ultimately, are
sent to a real asylum to be doped into submission. Even
when the nuns who run the show are trying to have a little fun,
there's the spectre of sadism, as in the bizarre scene where
a group of the girls stand naked while two nuns bestow "awards"
for the biggest breasts, hairiest bush, etc. And you definitely
don't want to get on the bad side of Sister Bridget (Geraldine
McEwan), a corrupt harridan who relishes the torment of her charges
and justifies it all as the necessary penance of sinners.
Our heroines are not always
heroic. Bernadette, for instance, is a sullen and rather callous
girl who's probably had the hardest life of the three. She has
a late-inning scene with an elderly asylum co-worker that might
force some viewers to break their identification with her; but
we see that kindness doesn't come easily to Bernadette, who may
see her harshness as a hostile act of mercy. Another inmate,
the psychologically fragile Crispina (Eileen Walsh in the film's
standout performance), goes steadily downhill after the aforementioned
humiliating "awards ceremony." Crispina's arc is the
film's most helplessly tragic, sealing the movie with the most
haunting image of desolation this year. She, too, is realistically
drawn as an unstable and childish girl who isn't equipped to
survive the rigors of Magdalene (which include sexual abuse by
a priest).
The Magdalene Sisters gives one of its heroines an almost
absurdly matter-of-fact release from bondage, as if to say that
all it takes is one person on the outside (preferably male) to
redeem you and rescue you, and heaven help the rest of the girls
who don't have one. The other two make such a loud botch of their
eventual escape that, oddly, it feels credible -- more so than
a carefully planned Hollywood escape would have been. You get
the feeling that Sister Bridget just watches them go, thinking
to herself, Good riddance. The movie ends happily for these three,
but the movie is set in the mid-'60s, and a title at the end
informs us that the Magdalene Asylums were in business until
1996, detaining more than 30,000 women before their last
door was closed. This is a riveting piece of drama about a forgotten
slice of history, no matter what the esteemed movie critics at
the Vatican say about it.
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