The Magdalene Sisters

There is little balance here; Mullan wants to attack, manipulate, and represent the torture and suppression these women endured well into the 1970s, not enter into a dialogue. Even his leads, the girls who suffer the beatings, bloodied eyes, dehumanisation and hard labour are torn inside, believing this is what they deserve and that this well-decorated gulag is better than the world outside the laundry walls. Mullan's film is full of anger and righteous indignation, full of justified hate. He pummels your emotions unwaveringly. And thank the Lord for that.

The opening scene had me up in my seat, and in tears. At a wedding reception, a young boy in his Sunday best sits in a corner with his fingers in his ears. Over on a small raised stage the parish priest is thumping out a beat on his bodhrán, while upstairs a teenage girl, Margaret (Anne Marie Duff), is being raped by her cousin. When she goes down and tells her newly wed sister what has happened, she tells her father, who tells his brother, who asks the rapist, his son, what his version of the events are, and then the priest is involved. This internal investigation is drowned out by the Irish music celebrating two people's holy matrimony. We bounce around the room from oblivious faces to those, like Margaret's mother, who are aware but ignoring what is going on. Then we cut to Margaret's face as she realises that her cousin, her attacker, will not be reprimanded but protected and she has been blamed for shaming the family on their special day. In the cold dawn, while her siblings sleep, woken by her father, she is driven away by the priest.

We witness many more reasons why other girls are sent to this organised hell, where you lose your full name, your voice, your freedom and your femininity. As Geraldine McEwan's Sister Bridget inaugurates them to her regime, we are reminded less of The Shawshank Redemption's (1994) bible-thumping, sadistic prison warden and more of R. Lee Emery's drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket (1987) - taking away everything that is individual, everything that is creative and everything that is human with a sardonic threat of a speech. Kubrick wanted to see how young men could be turned into cold, efficient killing machines; Mullan wants to relate how vibrant, intelligent young women could be turned into subservient, unquestioning workers. The parallel is continued with the black marble wall of women's first names in the title sequence (inmates of the laundries), a visual match to the war memorials for those who died in the US's military failure of the same period. Yet Mullan does not allow a system reliant on fear and productivity to win. Some of the girls might not survive the psychological and physical attacks, and many submit, but a few escape, damaged but alive and free. It is the only acceptable conclusion for the audience. After ninety minutes of despair, we need to know that these girls struggled on after the traumas, and we need to know these Sisters of Mercy no longer continue their work.

The Magdalene Sisters might take the form of a biopic and be based on testimonials, but Margaret and the other prisoners are amalgamations of their real life counterparts' experiences. This is a smart play on Mullan's part. If he were to name specific individuals, or recreate definite incidents, he would open himself up to the nitpicking attacks of the naysayers. Why allow censorial organisations like the Catholic League the opportunity to attack the film on the grounds of defamation? The film explores a truth which few Catholics would like to admit to, but in recent years have had little choice to do anything else. Like the little boy in the corner, trying to block out the constant noise, Catholic organisations must stop denying the crimes some of their religious leaders have associated them with. Mullan has presented the evidence with passion and zeal, and this film is a flawless prosecution after the scattershot nihilism of his debut, Orphans (1999). Every time the Vatican shoots the messenger, as opposed to apologising for acts committed in its name, it cheapens the faith of those it represents. Such insensitive collusion forces the intelligent Catholic viewers of Mullan's masterpiece to doubt even more whether we want such an uncaring, self serving institution in any way involved in our own faith.

Reviewed by Bob Carroll