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Goodbye Gruel World
The Magdalene Sisters Whacks Irish Catholic Sexual Repression With a Flying Mallet
The Magdalene Sisters | |
| Director: | Peter Mullan |
| Cast: | Anne-Marie Duff, Geraldine McEwan, Nora-Jane Noone, Dorothy Duffy, Eileen Walsh |
| Genre: | Film, Drama, Foreign |
By Ian Grey | Posted
Until their doors were closed in 1996, the Irish branch of the Roman Catholic Church sent more than 30,000 "fallen women"--prostitutes, single mothers, social activists, the poor and orphaned--to Dickensian forced-labor camps called Magdalene asylums. Speaking was not allowed, food consisted of foul gruel; each day was a grind of backbreaking work in the for-profit laundries, uneasy sleep in hard-bed barracks, and punishment under the watch of sadistic Sisters of Mercy. The unfortunate inmates sometimes lived out their entire lives inside institution walls. The Magdalene Sisters, director/writer Peter Mullan's heartfelt indictment of this long obscure atrocity, is righteous, but its characters are unnecessarily reductive representatives of Innocence and Evil, with scant interest spent on the gray areas that inform the most awful actions.
The Magdalene Sisters opens with a series of miscalculations that reoccur throughout the film. At a 1964 Dublin wedding, a priest, accompanied by a group of Gaelic musicians, pounds with mounting creepy ecstasy on a drum while Mullan crosscuts to young Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) being raped by her cousin, to shots of crucifixes, and then to pious local menfolk. As the music climaxes, it fairly well looks like the priest will do the same.
After this blunt hammering of the film's themes, Margaret is sent packing by her never-seen parents to a cold, miserable Magdalene asylum run by queen bitch Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan, easily out-eviling Louise Fletcher's Nurse Ratched). We then journey through several overly compressed years in the spiritual charnel house as seen through the eyes of two other victims: Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), a spirited minx, imprisoned for being attractive and looking at boys; and Rose (Dorothy Duffy), damned to the asylum when she conceives a child outside of wedlock.
The film achieves its first, no-caveats fine moment when two of the girls attempt to escape. Eventually, one succeeds, but the other gives in to long term Stockholm syndrome--believing herself to be unable to function in the real world, she turns back to the asylum to finish her life sentence. In-between, the film is a relentless horror-show litany of church-sanctioned awfulness. Whippings, starvation, isolation--nothing is spared in the church's efforts to turn their charges into hopeless, scripture-quoting automatons. (The Vatican has condemned the film.)
How does one add nuance to such a tale of indisputable power abuse? Mullan, a fine, accomplished actor (The Claim, Trainspotting) and promising director, never finds out. With his tendency for over-underlining his scenes and a too sober tone, Mullan also allows the film's events to slide dangerously close to camp. Two particularly demented nuns round up the girls for an accounting of their sins, which necessitates the girls stripping down to their christening suits. As the nuns cackle with sadistic Sapphic intent, and the roving camera shows all, you could be excused for thinking you had stumbled in on a midnight Apex screening of Catholic Teen Love Slaves.
Overstatement again undermines things with the appearance of Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who, under Mullan's micromanaged direction, starts out a sweet simpleton but quickly dissolves into a Snake Pit-level wild-eyed and drooling insane person. You'd have to look to Crispin Glover to find a similar level of alienating histrionics. On the other hand, the incredibly skilled Noone allows her Bernadette a recurring strain of nastiness without betraying her character's core decency. The film's second triumph comes when Bernadette tends to a dying woman who earlier went mad and then betrayed her. Bernadette mocks the pitiful old woman but spares her a final delicate kiss.
It would have helped if Mullan had explored something beyond blunt (if repressed) sexual power as a motivation for his cruel nuns and pompous clergy. More importantly, we never learn why the girls' parents are so eagerly complicit in their children's doom.
Still, it isn't so much Mullan's rookie-director gaffes that rob his film of its aggregate power, as it is current events outperforming historic awfulness. To a degree, many of us have become numbed by the Catholic Church's dumbfounding day-in, day-out support of serial child-rapist priests, its traditional limits on women's rights, and recent anti-gay spew. And our reaction to this film, like so many other more important things, suffers for it.
Yes, the movie was stark portrayal of religious life during that historical period. It clearly portrays that violence is a contagious disease. Since the seventies, many religious women and their communities have firmly moved from a lifestyle defined by others within or without the church. Taking stands against violence of any kind and living together in a sustainable manner model Gospel values in a world that struggles for its future. It is only in modeling these Gospel values of continual conversion that individuals and religious communities can offer an alternative to government corruption and corporate greed. So let all who see this movie recall those victimized by this scandal both the religious women and their boarders who where trapped in their history. We can pray for them while we strive to remake life in our own day.
Posted 2.27.2009 11:50 AM
Ian Grey, your reviewer, needs to face reality about the Magdalen laundries. I suppose it is hard to believe the film is not overdone, but research proves otherwise.
Quote from Mary Norris, survivor of Magdalen Asylum in Cork, quoted in the Irish Independent 3-9-03:
"Plenty of people will think the events in the film have been exaggerated to make it more dramatic. But I tell you, the reality of those places was a thousand times worse. There's a scene in which a girl is crying in the dormitory and another goes over to her bed to comfort her. That could never have happened. You weren't allowed any private conversation…
"Again, in the film the girls get glimpses of the outside world and even ordinary people who don't live in the laundries. In reality, we were totally incarcerated. You could see nothing except sky.”
"Many survivors refuse to talk about what they went through but I've never been ashamed to have been in one of those places. The shame is not mine; the church should be ashamed. They say now they're sorry - what they mean is, sorry they were found out."
For a documentary with actual survivors, see Sex in a Cold Climate made in 1998. It was what inspired the film. Judge for yourself at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1732953937770017672
I am not persuaded that the sisters are quite the victims Sister Zelda proposes. Blaming cruelty as something “the system made me do” is a little too convenient.
Posted 2.27.2009 3:09 PM
Interestingly, the headquarters of the Sisters of Mercy in the Americas is in nearby Silver Spring, MD.
The order apologized for the Magdalene Laundries in 2003 by referring to them as a “time…of which we are not proud…we grieve with all victims of the Magdalene Laundries and pray that they experience God's comfort and healing in their lives…We're all human, we've all made mistakes. We do reach out and apologize to anyone who may have been abused at the hands of our sisters, or any sisters." They apparently operated three laundries in Ireland, and one facility early on, not a laundry, in San Francisco.
Please note how this is a classic example of a non-apology apology. The Sisters nowhere admit their own culpability for the order’s horrific abuse of young women.
Taking responsibility for the particulars of their cruelty, and owning their own shameless conduct is replaced by the exculpatory, “We’re all humans, we’ve all made mistakes.” Well, yes, but…sorry, no sale, if that is all you offer.
Note as well, the conditional aspect of their apology: They “apologize to anyone who MAY have been abused.” Imagine, maybe there was abuse, maybe there wasn’t.
In addition, the sisters employ the passive voice: “anyone who may have been abused” versus “anyone we abused.” Bless me Father, for mistakes were made,”…. maybe, by whom we’re not sure, of course, but we are sorry this happened, though how it happened, we cannot know for sure…something about history.
Posted 2.27.2009 4:13 PM
I came from a well placed Catholic family in New Orleans, La. and attended Catholic schools while growing up. The brothers and sisters who taught me were uniformly sadistic and malicious. You were punished for not conforming to the rituals and prayers of the faith. You had no choices whatsoever under their supervision. Life was a miserable and silent chore of making it through. So the Magdalene Laundries is just another aspect of all that Catholicism governs. The Catholic Church has done more to oppress humanity, deny and obstruct knowledge and civilization and satisfy their base and cruel fetishes and desires than any other force known to the history of mankind.
Posted 3.1.2009 3:30 PM
we did not know now we do know thank you peter mullan we can now prevent religious nuns in institutions from ecer commiting sins against humanity again we the people now know and will do all in our power to prevent this again mmk
Posted 3.12.2009 8:30 AM
mercy sisters did at least apologize but good shepherd nuns with 10 institusions in ireland and more around world never evev remotely apologigsed and threatened to sue a radio staion? after abusing 30,000 kids?// the evil force is still internal in that order of good shepherds it would seem. hard hearts and evilinds and bad behavior it appearsin that order of nuns could not even say they were sorry! not truewoman of god yet not even close. mmk
Posted 3.12.2009 1:01 PM
is there no tough lawyer who is willing to represent these abused girls and take the goog shepherd nuns to a court of law in what seems to be cromes against humanity? where are the strong lawyers?
Posted 3.15.2009 12:45 PM
if there is no tough lawywer in this entire world then we the people who now know what went on behind good shepherd convent walls can be their spokesmen in court but it needs to done these girls had no one to protect them and defend them against these crimes against humanity as it seems to be but we the people now know and now will help them.
Posted 3.15.2009 12:49 PM
How can a society prevent a return to secretive repressive religious institutions which employ physical or psycological torture to control inmates who are used as slave labour for monetary profit ?
We may live in more enlightened times in America or Europe where such state-sanctioned barbarism may be unthinkable.
But I fear that any capitalist society is capable of regressing and repudiating enlightened thought thus opening the doors yet again to State mandated religious repression to control coerced labour.
It is imperative to fully research and understand how the Irish State and the Irish population came to accept the Catholic Church run Magdalene Laundries, Industrial Schools, and Orphanages, and their inhuman practices, as somehow acceptable.
When that historical process is fully understood such evil practices can be prevented from ever recurring.
Posted 3.20.2009 10:03 PM
good rational thinking thank you neontag
Posted 3.21.2009 9:24 AM
let us add power of good hearted people to containment info that the creator show us what to do to protect kids from further abuse and explitation by christian brothers and good[bad actually] institutions it would seem. all kids are so valuable regardless of satus. thank to all who care! mmk
Posted 3.21.2009 9:27 AM
jawe need laws to allow governments to check on well being of childrenand young adults in religious institutions because it is now proven how abusive many of them can be hiding behind a religious organization while exploiting young children . mmkmes smith book on containment excellent explaining what i think comment is about byneantog. most helpful understanding.
Posted 3.21.2009 12:21 PM
seems to me the behavior of good[actually bad] shepherd nuns is a blasphemy against god to claim being holy at the same time beating down the spirit and self worth of 30,000 young girls. may these valuable young abused girls realize how valuable they truly are and the nuns need to own up to how horrible it appears they were/are. mmk
Posted 3.23.2009 8:23 AM
may4th mass will be offered at st.mary's lowertown 12 noon st.paul minnesota for all magdalene laundry girls. obviously no funeral was previuosly offered for girls that were buried in mass graves so will try and give them and all survivors some dignity mmk
Posted 4.3.2009 7:49 AM
during this may 4th mass i felt a huge water fall come over me and total joy! truly the holy spirit and girls were present at this special mass to give these girls the dignity they deserved -long,long over due but now accomplished. forever they will sing with the great angelic choirs. blesseds
Posted 5.21.2009 7:45 AM
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11 comments.
Member since 2/27/2009
i spoke personally with a magdalene laundry survivor and she said mullans movie was nery accurate but abuse by nuns much worse than shown!