The Secret Scripture

This film tells the story of a psychiatrist in Ireland, who is sent to a hospital by the Church to evaluate a woman who has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the past 40 years.

"The Secret Scripture" begins very slowly, and for a while I thought it wanted to be "The Notebook". It turned out not to be the case, as the plot unfolded to become a shocking story of power abuse. How the perpetrator was capable of doing such inhuman things was simply beyond me. How he lived with his conscience for 40 years was shocking as well. I managed to guess the ending before the obvious clues were given, but seeing such a satisfactory ending drove me to tears. It was really touching to see the ending, even though justice arrived in an untimely manner.

One of the things I reckon a lot of people fear, is being detained in a mental hospital. While I do think that things probably have improved over the years (dear God let that be true) in those facilities, it still wouldn't be something anyone would look forward to.

The acting is really good, the story engaging and the tension is high. You may feel squeamish at times and sickened, but that is what the movie wants you to feel. Not an easy watch then, but if you can watch it, you will find something that is worth your time and really engaging.

Sebastian Barry's brilliant novel SECRET SCRIPTURE has been transformed into an eloquent touching film Johnny Ferguson and Director Jim Sheridan. With moody cinematography by Mikhail Krichman and a musical score by Brian Byrne (with a lot of help from Beethoven) and a perfect cast of actors, this radiantly beautiful film should satisfy a large audience – those who love period pieces, Ireland, sweet romance, ad twists of plot.

Roseanne McNulty (Vanessa Redgrave) must vacate the soon-to-be demolished mental institution in Roscommon, Ireland that she's called home for over 50 years. The hospital's psychiatrist, Dr. William Grene (Eric Bana) is called in to assess her condition. He finds himself intrigued by Roseanne's seemingly inscrutable rituals and tics, and her fierce attachment to her Bible, which she has over the decades transformed into a palimpsest of scripture, drawings, and cryptic diary entries. As Grene delves deeper into Roseanne's past, we see her as the young woman Rose (Rooney Mara), whose charisma proves seductive. We learn that she moved to Sligo to work in her aunt's café, fell in love with a dashing fighter pilot Michael McNulty (Jack Reynor), and that a local priest Father Gaunt (Theo James) fell tragically in love with her. The elderly Lady Rose is institutionalized because it was rumored that she murdered her only child at childbirth. Dr Grene and a nurse (Susan Lynch) are supportive of Lady Rose as the story unfolds in the most sensitive manner.

There is much to be praised in this film – the manner in which the conflict between the Irish and the British altered personal lives and relationships, the horrors of the early 20th century insane asylums, the struggle Catholics priests at times endure with their celibacy vows, and the beauty of Ireland – but the cast is so fine that they shine with this material. This is a very fine film.

Superb adaptation of Sebastian Barry's book. It tells the story of Ireland's dark, and for years deliberately hidden, history with regard to the inhuman attitudes towards & treatment of unmarried mothers & their babies. Excellent performances from all but Vanessa Redgrave is simply outstanding.

It's easy to get absorbed in a story without recognising the bigger picture that frames the narrative. To describe The Secret Scripture (2017) as a woman's diary of life in a mental hospital masks the darker narrative of horror perpetrated by the Catholic Church. Based on a 2008 novel of the same name, the film is part of the recent wave of disclosures about appalling misdeeds committed in the name of holiness across various parts of the world.

Set in Ireland from the early 1930s, the story traces the life of Roseanne McNulty who was falsely incarcerated in an Irish mental hospital owned by the Catholic Church. After more than 40 years as a patient, Rose must be discharged or moved elsewhere when the hospital closes. New psychiatrist William Grene (Eric Bana) discovers that she is mentally sharp and has meticulously recorded her life story across the pages of an old bible. In a complex series of flashbacks the elderly Rose (Vanessa Redgrave) recounts how, as a feisty young woman (played by Rooney Mara), she had fallen in love with Michael McNulty (Jack Reynor) believed by locals to be a British sympathiser. The new Father Gaunt (Theo James) takes more than a pastoral interest in Rose and tries to stop the affair. When Rose becomes pregnant and Michael is embroiled in the Irish Troubles, she is hunted down by local vigilantes for harbouring the suspected sympathiser. Enraged by the affair, Father Gaunt certifies her to be suffering from nymphomania and she is subjected to electric shock treatment and other abuses over four decades.

Great filming locations and stellar acting performances by Redgrave and Mara do little to save this film from its complicated and fractured web of episodic flashbacks. The constant shifts of time, place, and people is at the cost of narrative coherence and the contrived finale defies beiief. The narrow expressive repertoire of Eric Bana casts a pall of indifference over Rose's existence as if she were a specimen in a hospital test tube. When it is revealed she is much more than that, Bana strains to emote with warmth or empathy and leaves you wondering why he was cast in that role. The transitions between the younger and older Rose are increasingly disjointed as the entire ensemble drifts towards its soap-operatic conclusion.

Uncertain direction and messy narrative means it is easy to lose sight of the larger story of injustice suffered by people like Rose at the hands of the Catholic Church. The moral perversion of Father Gaunt and the Church's obsession to punish victims is left unexamined. Despite excellent filming and a well-crafted atmosphere of claustrophobic confinement, this film struggles to rise above a mediocre melodrama.

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