A hauntingly compelling film

“The Magdalene Sisters” is a drama, based on actual accounts, that tells the haunting story… “The Magdalene Sisters” is a drama, based on actual accounts, that tells the haunting story of four girls and their experiences in the Magdalene asylums of Ireland.

The Magdalene asylums – named after Mary Magdalene, the carnal sinner turned penitent follower of Christ – were set up by the Catholic Church as a place to reform “fallen” girls. Governed by nuns, these institutions were nothing more than laundry houses that worked the girls beyond physical exhaustion, which was considered an “earthly means to cleanse the soul.”

The film follows Margaret (Anne-Marie Duffy), Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), Rose (Dorothy Duffy) and Crispina (Eileen Walsh) as they work in silence and misery.

As we soon find out, these dredges of society are nothing more than scared girls who have been put in the asylums by their families and their faith.

One girl was sent there because she was raped, others are unwed mothers and another still is there because she was deemed a potential temptress of boys. Set in 1964 – when the women’s liberation movement was growing in America – this film shows how girls were being cut off from society, and verbally and physically abused, in Ireland.

With the Catholic Church coming under worldwide scrutiny for the behavior of its priests, this film can easily be seen as another unmasking of the injustices of Catholicism. It questions the blind faith that these people have in their spiritual leaders. But it is also the story of the strength these girls exhibit as they come of age in an oppressive environment.Many of the characters in the film have no hope of escape or freedom. Some women have been there for 40 years, laboring each day in the dark confines of the asylum, which has the appearance of a fine, holy institution. At the film’s end, we learn that around 30,000 girls were sent to the Magdalene asylums throughout Ireland and, shockingly, that the last one was not closed until 1996.

The actresses do an incredible job with their characters. Bernadette becomes as outwardly cold as the nuns around her, but we see fire in her when she tries to enlist the laundry boy to help her escape, and when she lashes out at her oppressors with a candlestick.

Duffy’s performance as Rose is striking. Quiet and soft-spoken, she never loses her sweetness as she endures the heartache of having been forced to give up her child. Despite the abuse of the nuns, she does not become hardened.

Peter Mullan has created a compelling film that deals with a subject both horrifying and fascinating. “The Magdalene Sisters” draws you into the dark world of the asylums. And as you question ideas of morality, faith and society, it leaves you praising the strength of the female spirit.