The award winning story of the Magdalene Asylums of 1960s Ireland, where countless young women were ritually abused by the Catholic Church.
Scott Peter Mullen"s film, The Magdalene Sisters, stirred up no end of controversy when it was first 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 practices 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. The film begins in Dublin in 1963 with Margaret attending her sister"s wedding reception. As the guests watch a group of priests playing a tune unworthy even of being an Irish Euro-Vision 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 be seen happening, it is not possible to hear what is being said, reflecting the wall of silence surrounding the issue of rape at the time. The action then turns to Bernadette, a pretty girl who lives in a Catholic orphanage, her only friends being the weirdest set of twins since The Shining. The nuns watch with disapproval as Bernadette dares to talk through the fence with some local boys. The next day she is gone, the twins find her bed empty but aren"t particularly concerned once they discover she has left her hairbrush behind for them. The next girl to be introduced is Rose, who is in hospital having just given birth to an illegitimate son. A priest reassures 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 throughout Ireland appears. As soon as the working conditions which the girls will have to endure are exposed, it becomes clear that the film will not be a rehash of Sister Act. The girls are informed that they have been sent there 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 film then descends into every cliché and hypocrisy that has ever been attributed to the Catholic Church. The nuns make money 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, proving once and for all that other people have noticed there was something unnatural about John Wayne too. The Magdalene Sisters could have been an extremely moving film but despite all its efforts to shock and provoke, it didn"t manage to inspire any real feelings for the characters involved. The film would have been scandalous twenty years ago but perhaps due to modern cinema and recent real life scandals involving Catholic clergy, it somehow manages to make an interesting and important story feel a bit stale and even passé.
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play. Set in Ireland in 1964, in the Magdalene Convent for supposedly 'fallen' women run by the Catholic Church. The story centres around four girls, Crispina and Rose who are unwed mothers, Bernadette who was accused of flirting with boys and Margaret who was raped by her cousin at a family wedding. The girls are incarcerated at the institution and are forced to work long hours and endure humiliation and abuse on a regular basis. Actors: Eileen Walsh, Dorothy Duffy, Nora-Jane Noone, Anne-Marie Duff, Geraldine McEwan Directors: Peter Mullan Writers: Peter Mullan Producers: Alan J. Wands, Andrea Occhipinti, Ed Guiney, Frances Higson, Paddy Higson Language: English Subtitles: English Number of discs: 1
Based on the true accounts of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland, which eventually closed in 1996 after an estimated 30,000 women had been detained, this film follows the story of three of these young women in Dublin, 1964.
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