film review
|
|
film review |
HOME
CONTACT US
FILM NEWS
LATEST FEATURES
LATEST INTERVIEWS
LATEST REVIEWS
CONTRIBUTORS
KAMERA BOOKS
The Magdalene Sisters
Release Dates
The Magdalene Sisters
Inspired by the Channel 4 documentary Sex in a Cold Climate and condemned by the Vatican, actor-director Peter Mullan's second film, The Magdalene Sisters, proves that often it is the true stories that are the most powerful. Balancing a complete control of his material with a searing intensity and a sense of moral outrage, Mullan details life inside an Irish Catholic convent offering 'fallen' women a path to salvation - by doing the local laundry these women could literally wash away their sins. In reality, women were held in these convents against their will for indefinite periods, enduring conditions akin to slavery and subjected to a series of humiliations, both physical and psychological. The Magdalene convents – named after the mother of all repentant sinners, Mary Magdalene – now seem almost medieval in their cruelty but remained widely operational through the 1970s. The last one closed in 1996.
Set in Dublin County in 1964, Mullan's excoriating screenplay details three main characters arriving at one convent on the same day. In a remarkable opening sequence Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is raped by a cousin at a wedding celebration. Lively music drowns out her tearful confession to a family member and, as the news is related to other family members, tension escalates without the help of any dialogue. In the next scene, this 'sinner' is dispatched to the convent. The second introduction is Rose (Dorothy Duffy), who has given birth to an illegitimate child. As a manipulative priest persuades her to give her son up for adoption, her parents, refusing to acknowledge their grandson, spurn their daughter and pack her off to Magdalene. And finally Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), an orphan whose good looks attract too much attention from the boys, is branded a temptress and also sent to the nuns. They are introduced to the ways of the convent by Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), a beady-eyed force who humiliates them before dispatching them off to their purgatory in the laundry rooms.
Aware of the potency of his subject matter, Mullan is content to let the events speak for themselves. He has an eye for striking or poignant visual detail that seems convey so much more than dialogue. At one point, as the girls eat porridge for breakfast, the nuns are seen set to tuck into the mountains of sausages piled before them. In another unforgettable moment, Sister Bridget is seen reflected in the pupil of Bernadette's blood-caked eye. And for Christmas, a polished red apple on each bed forms a striking splash of colour in the womens' otherwise dreary world, reflected in the use of an undersaturated palate of ochre and browns from director of photography Nigel Willoughby. Meanwhile exterior scenes are bathed in sunlight, as if mocking the womens' incarceration.
Brilliantly acted by both newcomers and established names alike (with Mullan taking a cameo role as a father brutally returning his escapee daughter to the nuns) The Magdalene Sisters is unflinching in exposing the horrors and humiliations that these women endured. And while it makes for depressing and often distressing viewing, there are small moments of humour, a testimony to the strength of the human spirit. Mullan is also brave enough to give Sister Bridget a quieter moment of contemplation and even a moment of charm when, describing her childhood dream of becoming an actress, we are given an insight into that which lies behind the monstrous exterior. Too easy a target to demonise, in humanising Sister Bridget Mullan gives her the complex characteristics of a true psychopath – and in doing so creates surely one of the most chilling cinematic monsters of recent times.