Ireland
once had a method for dealing with teenage girls who yielded
to what the Catholic Church calls "temptation." As
illustrated in details so graphic that they may compete
with the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps for sadism, The
Magdalene Sisters presents the method by
which some 30,000 girls were so regimented and brainwashed
that they were driven to madness or hardened in their hatred
toward their captors. When the film begins, the year is
1964, and the place is Dublin. Margaret (played by Anne-Marie
Duff) is at a wedding, where a cousin rapes her in a closet.
One morning, while her brother watches, she is whisked
off to the institution run by the Sisters of Mercy and
other orders. The institution is named the Magdalene Asylum,
since Catholic theology for some reason pretends that Mary
Magdalene was a "sinner of the worst kind" who
needed to suffer a lot before she could enter the gates
of heaven. Next, Rose (played by Dorothy Duffy) is in a
playground at an orphanage; five boys flirt with her, and
she flirts briefly with them. Soon, Rose enters the same
institution, which already has a Rose, so she is renamed
Patricia. Meanwhile, Bernadette (played by Nora-Jane Noone)
is in a hospital, where she has given birth out of wedlock
to a beautiful baby. Her father arranges not only to have
the baby adopted but also to send her to the same place
as Margaret and Rose. Upon arrival, all three are escorted
to meet Sister Bridget (played by Geraldine McEwan), the
Mother Superior. After using a belt on a girl for trying
to escape, she explains that they must obey all the rules
or be punished. They are awakened at 6, have breakfast
at 6:30, then work as slaves, washing and drying their
clothes, bedsheets, and towels as well as keeping the floors
and walls of the facility spic and span. Although the film
focuses on the three, who sleep with two dozen or so others
in Dormitory Four, most of the character development deals
with Chrispina (played by Eileen Walsh), though all four
characters are composites of actual victims. Chrispina,
according to the story, was committed two years earlier
for giving birth to a child out of wedlock but hangs onto
a St. Christopher pendant as her one prized possession.
While hanging up clothes to dry in the yard, Chrispina
receives occasional visits from her sister, who accompanies
her son to wave outside a gate that looks into the yard,
making her feel delighted each time. One day after the
girls shower, while still in the nude, two nuns decide
to play what they characterize as a game. Who has the smallest
and biggest breasts? Who has the biggest bottom? Who has
the most pubic hair? Chrispina finds the "game" humiliating,
and that evening she wets her bedclothes, hoping to die
from influenza. Although she recovers, her pendant has
fallen off, and soon Chrispina tries to commit suicide.
Later, during a ceremony, a priest strips off his clothes
due to a bout of itching, since Margaret, to punish him
for abusing an inmate, has put nettles in his clothes;
as he stands naked, Chrispina repeatedly yells, "You
are not a man of God." That night, two men escort
Chrispina to a mental institution where in solitary confinement
she eventually goes mad. One year later, Chrispina's sister
and son arrive for another visit. Rose goes over to tell
them that Chrispina has been transferred, whereupon she
is thrashed severely by Mother Superior for the offense
of talking with an outsider and told that the same thrashing
will continue daily for a month. When Bernadette enters
Mother Superior's office to inform her that an elderly
nun has just died, she observes Rose receiving the punishment.
Earlier, Margaret's brother has secured her release. Bernadette
then convinces Rose that she must leave as soon as possible.
Early the next morning, the two break out of the locked
dormitory room, rummage for the key in Sister Bridget's
office, threaten bodily harm to her if she will not give
up the key, and they walk out to freedom, a scene that
unfortunately is entirely fictional. The trailer of The
Magdalene Sisters, directed and written by
Peter Mullan, says that the escapees exposed the institution,
which finally shut down in 1996, but alas that story is
not told in the film, which clearly indicts Irish society
for ignoring what happened to young girls who were incarcerated
for offenses that were not their fault. The Vatican, which
has recently told Catholic parliamentarians how to vote
on a matter of morality, is not pleased with the film,
which survivors say was less brutal than what actually
occurred. For revealing in considerable depth the totalitarian
system under which the girls suffered, the
Political Film Society has nominated The Magdalene
Sisters as best film exposé and best
film on human rights of 2003. MH
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