| SiGN UP! join
the DigsNews mailing list + we'll keep you posted about updates and other DIGS-related news .
|
|
|
|
| ..
|
rented
any good movies lately?
jump
to the
boards
and recommend it.
|
| . |
| help
support digs ... shop for movies and more at the digsShop, or donate to digs directly!
|
. |
copyright ©1999-2005
DigsMagazine.com.
|
Plot synopsis
It's 1960s Ireland, and while elsewhere in the world, hemlines are going
way way up, good Irish Catholic girls are still expected to be prim and
proper and chaste, lest their feminine beauty tempt weak men from the
path of good. Girls who fail to do so get sent to one of the country's
Magdalene Laundries run by nuns of the Catholic Church. Billed as
rehabilitation centers for wayward girls, these laundries essentially
served as prisons for girls who'd been cast out by their families, and
slave labor for the church. The Magdalene Sisters centers around
a group of young girls who were confined at one of the Magdalene
Laundries in the mid-60s. Margaret gets raped by her drunk cousin at her
sister's wedding; when word gets out to her father, his solution isn't
to seek justice for the horrible violation committed against his
daughter, but to have her shipped out of sight so he doesn't have to
deal with the problem. Rose has just given birth out of wedlock when her
father strong-arms her into giving up her newborn son for adoption; she
changes her mind almost immediately, but it's too late, and Rose finds
herself being escorted to the laundry. Bernadette's only crime is that
she's so pretty she drives the boys to distraction; when the nuns at her
orphanage catch her flirting at the playground one day, they take
pre-emptive action and promptly call up their friends at the Magdalene
Laundries, where Bernadette is immediately transferred. At the laundry,
the girls serve under the dictatorial rule of Sister Bridget and her
fellow nuns. Forced to wear drab brown shapeless shifts and labor over
laundry for no pay whatsoever, the girls are allowed to ask no
questions, and any attempts to form friendships are soon curtailed.
Humiliated and beaten, the girls struggle to maintain their dignity and
find a way out, even in the face of nuns and priests who justify their
cruel actions in the name of God.
Review
The Magdalene Sisters reveals such a fascinatingly horrifying
episode in recent history that I'll forgive writer-director Peter
Mullan's occasional heavy-handedness in dramatizing the story. Yes, it
would have made for a more complex and challenging film if Mullan had
depicted Sister Bridget and the rest of the Magdalene nuns with even a
shred of humanity, but in the end, I think I'm kind of okay with the
fact that they're uniformly portrayed as sadistic, deluded fanatics:
there's something incredibly shocking about seeing women who profess to
be of God behaving in such an ungodly manner, even to a total heathen
like myself, and that shock value is a big part of why the movie is so
moving. It's just unbelievable to think that these kinds of atrocities
could have been committed against women who were guilty of nothing more
than being female, really -- and that these brutalities happened not in
some far off third-world country, but in a country in Western Europe,
and not all that long ago (the last of the laundries apparently didn't
close until 1996 -- that's less than ten years ago, folks). The acting
is excellent, particularly Geraldine McEwan as head dragon lady Sister
Bridget, and Eileen Walsh as Crispina, an unwed mother whose mind isn't
all there, but whose faith remains unshakable through abuse after abuse.
The Magdalene Sisters isn't easy to watch, as it's impossible not
to feel infuriated at the subjugation of these women by a religion
claiming to be acting for the women's own good. But it's a powerful
story, and one that very much needs to be heard. —reviewed
by Yee-Fan Sun
--------------------------->
lounge . nourish
. host .
laze
. home .
|
