Nun of this, nun of that (The Magdalene Sisters (DVD))

Member Name: cswann

Product:	The Magdalene Sisters (DVD)
Date:	25/03/04 (177 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great story, and a feeling that the truth is being told at last

Disadvantages: Unrelenting and grim

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 their most successful. The ‘sexual’ misdemeanours for which girls were taken there could, incidentally, simply mean looking attractive and liable to get men worked up – especially if your parents found you be troublesome, and were keen for you to get sent out of the way.
Thousands of girls were ‘looked after’, or incarcerated, more likely, in this way, and many even spent their entire lives in there.
Director Peter Mullen has insisted that some of the institutions were worse in reality than how he portrayed them in the movie. He announced at the Venice Film Festival that the Catholic Church could be compared to the Taliban. Predictably enough, the Catholic Church has condemned the movie.

Peter Mullen, who also scripted the movie, may be more famous to some for his acting roles (he appeared in “Trainspotting” and “Braveheart” and won a Cannes best actor award in 1998 for the lead role in Ken Loach’s “My name is Joe”)

In making “Magdalene Sisters” he demonstrates some of Loach’s
traits – especially using mainly unknown actors. They are all excellent.
We
follow the stories of 4 girls, played by Nora-Jane Noone (Bernadette), Anne-Marie Duff (Margaret), Dorothy Duffy (Rose), and Eileen Walsh (Crispina).

Bernadette is a real stunner, an orphan who is rather flirtatious, but nothing more than that. Margaret is raped at a wedding, and Rose and Crispina are both girls who have had babies out of wedlock, and had them taken away from them.

These are all based on real lives – something which adds extra poignancy to the viewing
experience.

The girls all end up in the Magdalene home, and most of their days are spent working in the laundry – which is actually operated as a business, they do the washing for the local community, the nuns rake in the profits.

Geraldine McEwen is the biggest name on the cast, and she takes on a role similar in its religious fervour as the one she had in TV’s “Oranges are not the only fruit”. She plays Sister Bridget, who presides over the institution, with a mix sinister sadism and misguided religious fervour. There are many examples of abuse of varying kinds, from voyeurism, and we see the priests for what they are – unable to remain celibate with such nubile young things around them. The spirits of the girls deteriorate, and it becomes truly
depressing. All in all, it’s a grim tale.

The movie is set in 1964 – and the fashions, hairstyles and so on are very well observed. Could be a trip down memory lane for some older viewers.

The movie offers only one only one point of view - did the Magalene homes movement start out of well-meaningness? Did the nuns not realise how cruel they were being, or did they feel they had a role to punish the girls for their sins? We are not really told much of this here.

It’s at
the end, where we are updated on the progress of the real women upon who the movie is based that the anger surfaces, and it becomes more of a movie with a mission. Which is a very very effective way of getting the message across.

The last Magdalene home, at Drumcondra in Dublin, closed in 1996.
Yes, as recently as that.


119 minutes long

Video - £11.69 from amazon.co.uk
£11.65 from bensons-world.co.uk

Summary: