The Magdalene Sisters (DVD)

For many young women the concept of becoming pregnant is fairly daunting even today, but Peter Mullen's 'Magdalene Sisters' shows that the repercussions are somewhat easier now than during the 1960s, in Ireland. (You'll be shocked when you discover exactly when this practiced finished.) In fact, you didn't actually need to have become pregnant to get yourself in 'trouble'... The story begins in 1964 when Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) attends a wedding. As the infectious traditional music fills the room a family friend entices her from the main gathering. With the celebrations continuing below, he rapes her. Shocked, she makes her ...  Read the complete review

The Magdalene sisters is one of the most controversial, hard hitting and yet so sensitive films I have ever seen. Winner of the Best Film at the Venice Film Festival 2002. >>> THE STORYLINE <<< Set in Ireland in the late 1960s this film follows the story of four girls who come from different backgrounds, not knowing each other proviously, all end up at an insitution. Their own situations all land them trapped in one of the many Magdalene laundries that exsisted in Ireland during the 19th and 20th century. This particular laundry is ran by Sister Bridget, an evil woman who's behaviour borders on sadism at times. She runs the ...  Read the complete review

Peter Mullen's controversial The Magdalene Sisters is an astonishing film that opens the mind and bleeds the heart as it exposes a true modern day horror. It reveals the shocking story of the Catholic Church's Magdalene Asylums, and the appalling crimes committed within their walls. The Magdalene Asylums were established in Ireland during the nineteenth century, and were governed by the Catholic order of nuns known as the Sisters of Mercy. These institutions were designed to provide a source of penance for young women who were deemed to have sinned in the eyes of the church and its devout followers. With their sins suitably cleansed, the girls were to be ...  Read the complete review

I remember around 5 or 6 years ago going to see the wonderful Mary Coughlan in concert and she performed a song called “Magdalene Laundry”, written by Johnny Mulhern. She introduced the song by describing what it was about, and it was for me the most memorable part of the show. The Magdalene homes were institutions run by nuns in Ireland, where women could, in essence, be locked up, mainly for ‘sexual’ misdemeanours, and set to work in the laundries there. The movie “Magdalene Sisters” is set in the sixties, a period when the Magdelene homes were at ...  Read the complete review

It is not often a small independent British film gets shown at the one screen Odeon in Dumfries. Harry Potter and Spiderman are your usual fare. So it was very unusual for it to show the Magdalene Sisters, a low budget British film with a cast of almost unknowns about the horrors of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland is not a likely candidate for a film to be shown there, but it was. The reason for this is that although the film is supposed to be set in Ireland in the 1960s, it was actually filmed in Dumfries and surrounding villages in 2000. It was directed by the Scottish director Peter Mullen and the story (for the want of a better word) and characters are based on ...  Read the complete review