Slave Labor in Irish Convents as Terrible as Prison
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
[E] ven though its setting isn't a penal institution but a convent,
Peter Mullan's grim, powerful film "The Magdalene Sisters" fits snugly
into a long line of heartsick dramas in which innocent people are thrown
behind bars to endure the degradation of prison. The inmates, all
female, are the victims of a stringently moralistic brand of Irish
Catholicism, now on the wane, that used to punish unmarried young women
(many in their teens) for premarital sex. Some are confined simply
because their frightened puritanical families consider them too unruly
These "bad girls" exiled from their families and communities, often
after becoming pregnant out of wedlock, were forced to do slave labor in
convent laundries that proliferated in Ireland until recently. The
existence of these religious labor camps run by the Sisters of the
Magdalene Order came to light only in the 1970's with the discovery of
the unmarked graves of women who lived there.
After the scandal broke, the laundries were closed, the last in 1996.
Some 30,000 women are thought to have passed through their gates.
Once incarcerated, the women were forced to toil long hours under close
guard doing unpaid work that was deemed fitting penitence for their
sins. In the movie's early scenes, the work is done with washboards and
tubs. The arrival of washing machines made the labor somewhat less arduous.
Forbidden to talk while on the job, the prisoners were continually
harangued by the nuns in charge about their sins and the unlikelihood of
salvation. Disobedience was punished with beatings and the shearing of
their hair. Although some of these outcasts were eventually reclaimed by
family members, others were simply abandoned to spend the rest of their
lives behind locked institutional doors.
"The Magdalene Sisters," which tells the semifictionalized stories of
four young women in one convent, is set roughly from 1964 to 1969. The
movie, which the New York Film Festival is screening this evening and
tomorrow afternoon at Alice Tully Hall (it recently won the top prize at
the Venice Film Festival), observes the narrative conventions of most
prison movies. There are small rebellions, failed escape attempts,
furtive alliances and punishments so harsh they make you wince. Only the
plucky and the fortunate find their way out of captivity. In one of the
most harrowing scenes, a young woman flees, only to be dragged back,
screaming and flailing, by her brutal, unforgiving father.
Most prison movies have a monster authority figure, and so does "The
Magdalene Sisters." Here that ogre is the head nun, Sister Bridget
(Geraldine McEwan), a twisted diabolical autocrat who gets gurgly and
teary-eyed over Ingrid Bergman in "The Bells of St. Mary's" and keeps a
picture of John F. Kennedy in her room. But when the rules of her little
fief are flouted, Sister Bridget turns into a vengeful demon. In a
brilliant performance, Ms. McEwan makes this character horribly
believable by portraying her cruelty not as raw sadism but as righteous
punishment dispensed by a religious fanatic with a warped sense of values.
"The Magdalene Sisters" more than fulfills the promise of Mr. Mullan's
audacious feature film debut, "Orphans," a rough-hewn surreal family
comedy first shown here three years ago in the New Directors/New Films
series. If Mr. Mullan's screenplay avoids the lurid shock tactics of
conventional women's prison movies, that's not to say the movie doesn't
include some appalling images.
In a humiliating exercise calculated to instill maximum body shame and
self-loathing, the women, naked and lined up for their morning
calisthenics, are sarcastically evaluated as physical specimens by a nun
who points out the ones with the largest buttocks and breasts and the
most pubic hair. In another scene Sister Bridget flies into a rage,
seizes a pair of scissors and hacks off the hair of a rebellious young
woman with a fury that leaves blood streaming from the girl's scalp into
her eyes.
The movie begins with sketchy vignettes that suggest how three of the
women ended up in the convent. Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) is raped
during a wedding party by a drunken cousin and makes the mistake of
confiding in a friend. As word spreads among the celebrants, the men's
accusing faces reveal that they blame Margaret for the assault, and
sometime later she is summarily dispatched by her father to the convent,
where she is given a brown sack of a uniform, shown into a shabby
dormitory and indoctrinated into the harshly regimental routine.
Next is Rose, an unwed mother shown cuddling her beautiful baby boy and
tearfully pleading with her parents to accept the child. Stone-faced,
they refuse even to look at her, and she is hustled off to the convent,
where she is renamed Patricia. The only sin apparently committed by
Bernadette, the most defiant of the new arrivals, is being a magnet for
adolescent male attention. When she arrives at the convent, Sister
Bridget fixes a contemptuous gaze on the girl and denounces her as a
temptress. Determined to escape, Bernadette flirts with a gawky youth
who delivers the laundry, promising him sexual favors if he will help
her escape, but he loses his nerve.
Finally, there is Crispina (Eileen Walsh), a sweet, simple-minded girl
(and the unwed mother of a young boy) who becomes unstrung when her only
worldly possession, a St. Christopher's medal, is stolen. The most
vulnerable of the four, Crispina meets the cruelest fate after revealing
she was sexually abused by a priest.
"The Magdalene Sisters" would be too painful to watch if it didn't have
a silver lining. Suffice it say that it is possible to fly over this
religious cuckoo's nest and remain free. All it takes is courage and the
timely kindness of strangers.
THE MAGDALENE SISTERS
Written and directed by Peter Mullan; director of photography, Nigel
Willoughby; edited by Colin Monie; music by Craig Armstrong; produced by
Frances Higson; released by Miramax Films. Running time: 119 minutes.
This film is not rated. Shown with a six-minute short, Jonathan Romney's
"Social Call," today at 9 p.m. and Sunday at 1:30 p.m. at Alice Tully
Hall, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center, as part of the 40th New York
Film Festival.
WITH: Anne-Marie Duff (Margaret), Dorothy Duffy (Patricia/Rose),
Nora-Jane Noone (Bernadette), Eileen Walsh (Crispina) and Geraldine
McEwan (Sister Bridget).
