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THE MAGDALENE SISTERS Send This Review to a Friend
The New York Film Festival 2003 showcased "The Magdalene Sisters," Peter Mullan's devastating drama based on the true enslavement in Catholic Church-run laundries in Ireland, places where supposedly wayward young women were sent and cruelly treated. The film, now getting a commercial release, has immense power, and there are numerous strong performances. The problem existed into the 1990s, and Mullan's astonishing film does a great job as an exposé as well as riveting drama.
It is hard to imagine such conditions so near the present, but over the years an estimated 30,000 women have been enslaved and exploited for commercial gain in the kind of institutions revealed in this film. Mullan has also written the screenplay, which doesn't hold back on the way in which families are complicit in placing women in virtual imprisonment.
The drama depicts family attitudes that scorn young women who dare to be different or are abused. A woman raped by a man is considered the guilty one and requiring punishment. Once in the institution, the women are at the mercy of harsh rules and cruel nuns, with Gealdine McEwan cast as one of the worst, the nasty Sistser Bridget. The entire cast is excellent, including Anne-Marie Duff, Dorothy Duffy, Nora-Jane Noone and Eileen Walsh.
The atmosphere created is chilling in this tense, tough film, which is structured so that you root for the women to somehow escape from the clutches of bigotry masquerading as religion. "The Magdalene Sisters" is clearly among the best films to be released in 2003. A Miramax release.
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