THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
(a film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This may be an authentic expose of conditions for penitents in convents, but really comes off like a women's prison film. What makes this film different from some is that it is no fictional imagining though the frequency of the outrages may be exaggerated. This film is made more meaningful after the various sex scandals in the Catholic Church that have occurred since the film was produced. Rating: 6 (0 to 10), high +1 (-4 to +4)
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS won this year's top prize at the Venice film festival and the Volkswagen Discovery award at Toronto. Still, I find it to be in some ways hackneyed. Writer/director Peter Mullan claims that though the names have been changed to protect the innocent, everything we see in this film actually happened. Of course, it makes a stronger and perhaps distorted statement to have all these horrors happen to a small number of women over a short period of time. Nevertheless, it really is damning that they occurred at all.
This is a film is about life in a convent, but it is no THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S. The young women committed by their families to the Magdalene convents are essentially imprisoned without trial. They are totally subject to the will and apparently non-existent mercy of the nuns. Mullan suggests that the system is a corrupt and sadistic as any prison system anywhere.
Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) was raped at a wedding by her own cousin. Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone) was attractive and was getting too much attention from the boys. Rose (Dorothy Duffy) was an unwed mother. None of these women in their late teens was criminal, but each was sent by her family or warders to the convent as penitents. There they seem to be part of a Dickens story where they are cruelly and brutally mishandled by repressed and hateful nuns. They are subject to beatings and abuse. They are essentially slaves with all choices taken from them. In one scene there is lesbian abuse. Even the local priests sexually abuse them with impunity.
There is no sympathy or any positive emotions shown by any of the nuns. Any humanity we see comes from the girls themselves. The help and support the girls give each other is the core of the film.
With only a few minor substitutions this could be the sort of women's prison film Ida Lupino could have directed. Instead it is about women committed by their families to work in convents as penitents. This is pretty strong stuff when you realize all the abuses in it are based on fact and actually happened to somebody. But the film still never really rises above prison melodrama or as lurid expose. This is a strong film about a shameful period in recent Church history, made all the more timely by events since the completion of the film. I rate it a 6 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper mleeper@optonline.net Copyright 2003 Mark R. Leeper
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