The Magdalene Sisters
A Nunsploitation.Net review
The Magdalene Sisters might have actually been a good movie if it weren't so blatantly obvious that director Peter Mullan has an axe to grind. His anti-clerical views are palpable throughout the film.The movie is based on actual accounts, but on the accounts of the victims. In addition, Mullan takes liberties with the stories to make the victims seem just a bit more victimized and to make the nuns seem just a bit more nefarious.
Mullan takes the most dreadful anecdotes from each of his interviewees and then condenses dozens of lifetimes of mistreatment into the personal stories of three fictional characters.
The nuns in the movie are portrayed as absolutely villainous without a shred of human decency or compassion. No attempt is even made to explain why the nuns feel justified in the cruelty and harsh punishments they inflict on the girls who work in the laundry houses.
So little character development is spent on the nuns, it's impossible for the viewer to sympathize with them in any way. As a result, they make for poor antagonists. They are little more than two-dimensional cardboard villains.
In the end, the defeat of the villains rings hollow and unsatisfying. The only thing about this movie that is even more unsatisfying, is at the very end. A message flashes across the screen. "It is estimated that as many as 30,000 women were detained at Magdalene Asylums throughout Ireland. The last laundry closed in 1996."
1996.
That would put it at six years before this movie was released in theaters. So people who watch this movie can't even feel outraged and go write a nasty letter and actually do something to right the injustices they've just seen.
The documentary, "Sex in a Cold Climate", that comes packaged with the DVD as an extra, proved to be much more moving than the movie itself and it did a better job of holding my attention, too. It was this documentary that inspired Peter Mullan to make this film and I can see why.
As the former Magdalenes tell their stories, you can see how Mullan wove their experiences into his film and combined elements of certain women into his characters.
Yet, the documentary itself is also biased. Not one single nun or any representative of the Catholic Church is given screen time to at least try to explain what went on in those laundry houses, or, better yet, what was going on in the heads of Church leaders who allowed this operation to continue for so long.
At the end of the documentary, these battered women give their opinion of the Catholic Church and religion in general and, surprise surprise, they've got nothing good to say. Who can blame them? Yet, one of the women interviewed remained a devout Catholic throughout her life, up until her death in 1998. You would figure this would make an interesting story, wouldn't you? How could someone who endured such torture still have faith in the Church? Was she brainwashed? Stockholm syndrome? (A psychological condition in which kidnap victims and hostages begin to identify with their captors.) Or did she manage to somehow seperate the teachings of Scriptures (forgiveness, compassion, mercy) from the actions of the Church? Did she manage to do what the Church did not? To forgive?
We never get to hear the answer as she is the one victim interviewed whose testimony on her view of religion and Catholicism is omitted! How convenient!
There is no justification for what went on in Ireland's Magdalene Laundry Houses, and no defense for what happened to these women. Yet, that injustice doesn't excuse the bias of the movie. In exaggerating the offenses and portraying the clergy as inhuman monsters, Mullan actually weakens the impact of his film. To make matters worse, the movie was made years after the laundry houses were closed so any point the movie makes is moot.
If you're the type of bitter person who hates Catholicism and takes some sort of pleasure in seeing nuns and priests portrayed in the worst way possible, then you will absolutely love The Magdalene Sisters. However, I don't think this movie does justice to the women who suffered in the Magdalene Laundry Houses. In exaggerating their misfortunes, director Mullan seems to imply that they didn't suffer enough to make a satisfying story. I think their stories could have been told truthfully and without hyperbole and the message conveyed would have been much, much stronger for it.
Just as compassion, forgiveness, and mercy seem to have somehow been lost on the clergy who ran the Magdalene Laundry Houses, so has fairness, objectivity and responsibility been lost on Mullan.
Back to Magdalene Sisters entry
Trailer: View trailer here
