The Magdalene Sisters

What is the difference between the parents of the girls in the asylum and the nuns who ran it? Absolutely nothing; they were both guilty of unspeakable crimes against these girls.

What is the difference between the nuns and Southerners? Absolutely nothing; they both used people as slaves.

The nuns silence as a weapon to keep the women from getting to know each other. One woman (Mary Murray) who ran away is brought back by her father (Peter Mullan), who beats her up in front of the women in the dormitory. Her hair is then cut off by Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan) in an attempt to further degrade her. In another instance, the three new arrivals along with others are forced to stand naked in front of a nun who ridicules their body parts. Crispina (Eileen Walsh) is sexually abused by a priest.

The Catholic Church has never apologized for the horrendous and inhumane treatment of over 10,000 girls that were imprisoned in these asylums over a period of 70 years, ending as recently as 1996. To this day, various Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalists continue to subjugate women on account of their fear and hatred of female sexuality and freedom.

Peter Mullan's (2002) film is based primarily upon the TV documentary 'Sex in a Cold Climate' by Steve Humphries which was first aired on RTE (Ireland) and BBC (England) in 1998. The documentary records the recollections of four Irish women who spent their youth and a good proportion of their adult lives as involuntary guests of uncompromising Roman Catholic nuns.

The film is set in a particular example of this institution which, somewhat akin to the English workhouses of the late 19th and early 20th century, became established in Ireland after the Second World War. The Magdelene Laundries took their name from the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene, a 'fallen woman' whom Christ befriended.

We join the main heroines of the movie - Margarette (Anne-Marie Duff), Bernadette (Norah-Jane No one), Rose (Dorothy Duffy) and Crispina (Eileen Walsh) in cameo as their entrance scholarships for the Magdelene Laundry are being sat.

What's most uncomfortable about this part of the movie, is trying to work out what's going on. Trying to work out what it is that's being whispered and what will be the upshot of it, and why. At first, it seems like the soundtrack of the film and the contrast have failed. But before long, it becomes obvious that the soundtrack of the film and the contrast have succeeded. The dark and deafening silence surrounding the circumstances under which these young women are being consigned to the unwelcome stewardship of the Magdalene Sisters comes through loud and muted.

We follow their induction into the laundry by Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), ably assisted by the Sisters Jude (Frances Healy), Clemantine (Eithne McGuinness) and Augusta (Phyllis MacMahon) who contrive with formally celibate gentlemen like Father Fitzroy (Daniel Costello) to represent a world in which God's greatest ideal is achieved through punishment and penitence.

As the film progresses, we begin to understand why it is no accident that these institutions should have been laundries. They could - after all - have been bakeries, dairies, canneries or places where mailbags are sewn.

With every garment that passes through the process, unmentionable filth is cleansed - if the Sisters are to be believed. And if the Sisters are to be believed, the sins of the teenagers and the route to Heaven is bound up in hot water, salt and flagellation.

And as we follow these unsaintly girls on their hapless journey, we finally learn that salvation is as straightforward as a letter we are not privileged to read and a brother who arrives with a suitcase - as if there is anything that anybody could possibly want to carry away from a place like this.

This film is a powerful elegy to the suffering of these unfortunate girls who, constrained to silence for so long, have finally found a voice.

'The Magdalene Sisters' would be a preposterous story, were it not factual. The actual names and circumstances appear to have been changed for the screenplay, but the original 50-minute documentary, filmed likely in the mid 1990s, tells us that everything, and more, happened to these children, virtually imprisoned for such things as having a child out of wedlock, or being sexually assaulted, or simply happening to look pretty. With no way out, they were forced to work long hours for no pay, operating the Magdalene Sisters' commercial laundry business, the last one until 1996. As one character, the old nun, explains, a strong Ireland requires that its men remain strong, so we have to remove temptation. The critic Ebert has a complete review. The only relevant "extra" on the DVD is the documentary, which features old photos and film, plus remarkable interviews with ladies who had been in a Magdalene Sisters asylum in the 1940s through the 1960s, including the three ladies around whom the movie's three main characters were built. A very gripping movie, well-acted.

Their idea of problem solving was more based on the Marque de Sade's idea of fun. If you are in the mood for sadism and horror...this is the film for you!!

I could not imagine that such a place as the laundry run by The Order of Magdelene Sisters could exist until I saw this film. The four girls that the story focused on Rose, Bernadette, Margaret and Crispina existed. I have been to Ireland and seen the beauty of that country. I once envied the life of those lucky enough to live there. I don't any longer.

The movie does not attack the Catholic faith so much as give a mindset of the 1960's in Ireland. My word here in the USA hippies were making love not war and these poor girls were only being human beings. I don't like to share the details of a film, but consider that one girl was an orphan and sent to the Magdelene's because she liked to flirt!! One was sent because she was raped!! My goodness, how barbaric can people be? film. And these people were nuns and priests for heaven's sake. Ah and let me not forget the parents who sent their daughters to that place. I will never complain about my parents again. Promise.

Please watch this film.

I would give this film 20 out of 10! Excellent acting, nimble direction and very well crafted representations of real-historical events and persons. Eileen Walsh should get a special award for an incredible performance as Crispina - Eileen, you are fantastic! I look forward to more from you! What shook me was the realization that this movie captured the interplay of Dickensian exploitation interwoven with the fascistic barbarity of the church. The laundry was a slave-plantation par excellence as it ground its physically, sexually and emotionally exploited slaves within an atmosphere of sheer terror and self-hatred - we deserve what we get because we are guilty - shame on us - this is what the masters of every plantation on this planet sought to instill in slaves.

What I would have liked to see developed further was how this laundry-plantation fit within the wider Irish society - whose clothes were being washed, and what was their relationship to the people who were incarcerated here? Religion's role in the sheer brutalization of its adherents has been evidenced throughout history - no mass religion has brought anything other than terror, subjugation and self-hatred to women - this film proves it beyond doubt! As men, we are beneficiaries of such brutalities to women - and we are like Margaret's brother - who sheepishly mutters some nonsense about waiting to grow up while his sister lived in hell. What pained me most in this film was the terrible scene of uniformed men dragging Crispina out of the dormitory - to her destruction - and here the most painful part was noting that none of the women could shake off their terror to help their sister who cried for help. The scene captured in a brutal moment, the truth that tyranny can only thrive with our collective fear. Religion like other totalitarian ideologies rules by internalized terror.

Enough, go on and watch this movie, its worth every tear you shed, because in the end, you will find that being disturbed makes you recognize the suffering of every Crispina, Margaret, Rose, Bernadette among us.