The severe living conditions in Catholic Church-run laundries in 1964 Ireland are sensationalized to the point of caricature in writer-director Peter Mullan's problematic melodrama "The Magdalene Sisters" (Miramax). The fact that the austere Magdalene asylums existed is undeniable. Undoubtedly, a number of young women sent there by their parents or guardians were treated cruelly. However, Mullan puts forth an oversimplified, worst-case scenario in which every nun is a monster and the only priest connected with the laundry has forced a simple young woman confined there to yield to his sexual demands. An audience has a right to wonder whether the film is attempting to throw light on a painful, little-known situation or merely genuflecting at the altar of sensationalism while exploiting others' suffering.
The film centers on four young women who were sent off to perform manual labor in facilities known as the "Magdalene laundries" in order to be spiritually rehabilitated for their alleged sins of the flesh.
Mullan's narrative presents them as physically and verbally abused by the nuns in charge of the laundry as if the four actually existed. However, these characters are fictitious, made up from composites of stories Mullan heard from those who lived in the workhouses -- a fact muddied by the coda that appears at the end of the film explaining "what became of" each of the characters.
As such, the movie's treatment of events exploits the facts to make it less a story of the four than a film aimed at positioning the church as one-dimensionally wicked. The nuns pictured are so uniformly sadistic and hypocritical that they make the infamous Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seem like Mother Teresa.
Unlike what follows, the film's opening scene is well-crafted. Using scant dialogue, it cinematically depicts young Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) being lured upstairs during a wedding reception by her cousin, who then rapes her and proceeds to pin the blame on her. The next day her scornful parents turn her over to a priest who delivers her to a Magdalene laundry workhouse at the same time that orphaned flirt Bernadette (Nora-Jane No one) and unwed mother Rose (Dorothy Duffy) arrive.
Insisting that they atone for their sins through hard manual labor, silence and no contact with the outside world, vicious Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan) brooks no questions and terrorizes the trio. Already veering toward madness is another unwed mother, the mentally challenged Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who believes she can communicate with her sister and toddler through her cherished St. Christopher medal. Overseeing the women's physical and spiritual well-being is a coven of Gestapo-like nuns.
This is the set-up. But beyond it, caricature trumps character. In place of narrative, the film unreels one horror after another on the four young women in lurid, episodic fashion: brutal beatings and malicious mind games by the nuns, including a group shower-room scene involving extended full frontal nudity and taunting insults aimed at dehumanizing their humiliated charges. The nuns, presented as consistently evil, money-grubbing, merciless hags, have no emotional depth. They are as exaggerated in their sadism as Ingrid Bergman is in celestial benevolence in "The Bells of St. Mary's" -- the film Sister Bridget sheds a crocodile tear over at a Christmas screening. Not one ounce of human kindness -- not to mention Christian compassion -- can be found under any wimple or collar.
This painting with broad brush strokes is better suited for the propagandist than the dramatist. Regrettably, drama is jettisoned along with objectivity since this kind of stacking the deck drains the narrative of any inner tension. The result is a cavalcade of cartoonish vignettes which present to viewers about as nuanced a picture of Irish nuns as 1915's "The Birth of a Nation" did of African-Americans. This pervasive shallowness extends to the girls themselves. Despite overall strong performances, they serve as little more than props, punching bags for the sinister nuns to vent their fury.
While some blame is attached to parents who so readily banished daughters in difficulty to the harsh conditions of these laundries, any attempt to understand the forces that shaped these institutions, which had much to do with the distinct religious and cultural milieu of the time and place in which they flourished, is rejected. The righteous indignation felt for the girls, while justified by the suffering they endured, is wrung out of the audience through cheap, kick-the-puppy melodrama where the audience is manipulated to cheer when the nuns get a taste of their own medicine.
It's distressing that any Irish women had to endure the deplorable conditions of these workhouses. But the film never attempts to move beyond shrill finger-pointing toward any meaningful insights. In place of a sensitive examination of abuse of religious power, Mullan's simplistic approach in depicting all the religious in his script as gleeful villains only serves to undermine the credibility of his film.
The film centers on four young women who were sent off to perform manual labor in facilities known as the "Magdalene laundries" in order to be spiritually rehabilitated for their alleged sins of the flesh.
Mullan's narrative presents them as physically and verbally abused by the nuns in charge of the laundry as if the four actually existed. However, these characters are fictitious, made up from composites of stories Mullan heard from those who lived in the workhouses -- a fact muddied by the coda that appears at the end of the film explaining "what became of" each of the characters.
As such, the movie's treatment of events exploits the facts to make it less a story of the four than a film aimed at positioning the church as one-dimensionally wicked. The nuns pictured are so uniformly sadistic and hypocritical that they make the infamous Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seem like Mother Teresa.
Unlike what follows, the film's opening scene is well-crafted. Using scant dialogue, it cinematically depicts young Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) being lured upstairs during a wedding reception by her cousin, who then rapes her and proceeds to pin the blame on her. The next day her scornful parents turn her over to a priest who delivers her to a Magdalene laundry workhouse at the same time that orphaned flirt Bernadette (Nora-Jane No one) and unwed mother Rose (Dorothy Duffy) arrive.
Insisting that they atone for their sins through hard manual labor, silence and no contact with the outside world, vicious Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan) brooks no questions and terrorizes the trio. Already veering toward madness is another unwed mother, the mentally challenged Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who believes she can communicate with her sister and toddler through her cherished St. Christopher medal. Overseeing the women's physical and spiritual well-being is a coven of Gestapo-like nuns.
This is the set-up. But beyond it, caricature trumps character. In place of narrative, the film unreels one horror after another on the four young women in lurid, episodic fashion: brutal beatings and malicious mind games by the nuns, including a group shower-room scene involving extended full frontal nudity and taunting insults aimed at dehumanizing their humiliated charges. The nuns, presented as consistently evil, money-grubbing, merciless hags, have no emotional depth. They are as exaggerated in their sadism as Ingrid Bergman is in celestial benevolence in "The Bells of St. Mary's" -- the film Sister Bridget sheds a crocodile tear over at a Christmas screening. Not one ounce of human kindness -- not to mention Christian compassion -- can be found under any wimple or collar.
This painting with broad brush strokes is better suited for the propagandist than the dramatist. Regrettably, drama is jettisoned along with objectivity since this kind of stacking the deck drains the narrative of any inner tension. The result is a cavalcade of cartoonish vignettes which present to viewers about as nuanced a picture of Irish nuns as 1915's "The Birth of a Nation" did of African-Americans. This pervasive shallowness extends to the girls themselves. Despite overall strong performances, they serve as little more than props, punching bags for the sinister nuns to vent their fury.
While some blame is attached to parents who so readily banished daughters in difficulty to the harsh conditions of these laundries, any attempt to understand the forces that shaped these institutions, which had much to do with the distinct religious and cultural milieu of the time and place in which they flourished, is rejected. The righteous indignation felt for the girls, while justified by the suffering they endured, is wrung out of the audience through cheap, kick-the-puppy melodrama where the audience is manipulated to cheer when the nuns get a taste of their own medicine.
It's distressing that any Irish women had to endure the deplorable conditions of these workhouses. But the film never attempts to move beyond shrill finger-pointing toward any meaningful insights. In place of a sensitive examination of abuse of religious power, Mullan's simplistic approach in depicting all the religious in his script as gleeful villains only serves to undermine the credibility of his film.