I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

I suppose watching this film in a theater is much more enjoyable than on television or videotape. I viewed it twice on the latter two mediums and I could not understand a significant portion of the dialog because it was whispered or mumbled in a thick Irish brogue. I suppose in the theater one could tell that Crispina was being sexually abused by the priest, but I couldn't tell who it was or even if the priest was the other party. Other than the audio/visual problem, I appreciate the exposure of this dreadful practice and was staggered that it didn't end until the mid-1990s. I also admire the bravery of the actresses to film the shower scene.

Scotland-born triple-threat (director, writer and actor) Peter Mullan's Venice GOLDEN LION champion, his second directorial endeavor, THE MAGDALENE SISTERS is a scathing exposé charts the story of three "fallen" girls' harrowing experiences in the notorious Magdalene Asylum in the 60s Ireland, where Roman Catholic church reigns with draconian measures to suppress women under the name of redeeming their sins.Before its title card duly arrives, the film briefly introduces the sins of our three protagonists, Margaret (Duff), is raped by her cousin during a family wedding, Bernadette (No one), an adolescent orphan deemed as a temptress simply because she flirts with a bunch of hormone- driven lads, and Rose (Duffy), a girl has just borne an out-of-wedlock infant. So burdened with these egregious injustice, they are sent to the asylum by their parents or caretakers, which is in fact a laundry run by nuns and governed by Sister Bridget (McEwan) with high-handed cruelty, in her first appearance Mullan conspicuously implies that God is definitely not her priority.Different personalities of these three girls are soberly singled out in their following dark days: Bernadette, the young rebellious one, learns a hard lesson after a failed escape plan, botched in the eleventh hour by her craven accomplice, a man of course, and becomes more cynical to her fellow inmates hereafter, No one, a headstrong starlet strikes with a piquant weight of strength and endurance; Margaret, is more flexible and sagacious among the gals, bears patiently her sufferings in exchange for a triumphant exit, and Duff nails her heroic facade wonderfully, she is the one, who voluntarily gives up a golden chance of escaping, and pulls through her trails and tribulations with a heartfelt declamation when she can face the God's men and challenge their muted consent of such atrocity; Duffy, uncannily resembles a young Joanne Woodward, her Rose is the meek sheep among the crop, offers a more subdued presence of forbearance and motherly nature.There is another victim here in the spotlight, whose fate is manifestly far less fortunate, to countervail the aforementioned three's ultimate salvation from the pit, Eileen Walsh plays Crispina, a mentally unstable unmarried mother, whose bob hairstyle doesn't match her bucktoothed features, but what happens to her encapsulates the appalling and despicable crimes those clergymen and nuns can ever inflicted on innocent souls under the aegis of the supremacy of God, no religion can ever account for those kinds of transgressions. Walsh courageously transforms a stunning performance out of Eileen's misery, her repeated, plangent bellow of truth is soul- shattering to say the least. Last but definitely not the least, the veteran British thespian, Geraldine McEwan, whose cinematic offerings are not so frequent, but here, she devotes herself wholeheartedly to bring about a daunting impersonation of an evil nun, driven by the monetary income, she is merciless to harness those helpless women while maintaining a holy-than-thou face of authority and patronization, only in the heightened crunch, her instinct tellingly betrays that there is something more important to her than her piousness to God.Overall, this clammy, unadorned survival drama is a gripping nay-sayer of God-awful religious abuse in our recent history, Mullan, most of the time, holds his sway over the thorny subject matter and never descends to levity, only in the scenes of Bernadette and Rose's final attempt to break out of their imprisonment, Mullan slickly transmits a whiff of comedy and triumphalism into their act, which works well to purvey an uplifting coda, yet, in another instance, two nuns obnoxiously tease about the sizes of their prisoners' breasts and their public hair, is just too nauseating to concur with Mullan's relentless opprobrium, nevertheless, this well-orchestrated film again emphatically attests the same old maxim: real life is so much worse than what happens in a movie.

Peter Mullan's The Magdalene Sisters is the harrowing depiction of what has been reported to have actually happened to a handful of young women during their incarceration at a religious convent in staunch, Catholic-ridden 1960's Ireland. Like most of the films I find are the most involving, it is a piece which seems to have come about out of its makers' stumbling across a news story; a news story of not too long ago in which a chilling narrative is very easily ecked out of stark foundations involving grounded people placed in extraordinary situations and made to suffer. We recall that Iranian director Jafar Panahi produced his 2006 film, Offside, from similar foundations; that of an article he read, and like The Magdalene Sisters, it was a tale of gender discrimination as well as how a system overreacted to an event which might otherwise have been dealt with less imperiously.The reason for hopping over to the Middle East like that lies with the fact what unfolds at the core of this drama, made four years earlier in 2002, isn't too dissimilar in mentality nor peer response. The popular stereotype (although like most of its kind, grossly misjudged) of the Irish people from back in the day from a British slant is one of backwardness and benightedness. Furthermore, a popular view on the laws and rules that govern the people of nations such as Iran and those akin to it by that of The West nowadays is one of a similarly feeble and dismissive nature. Panahi took the idea of a woman forbidden from attending football and plunged a central character into the cauldron of such a thing; going on to spin a tale out of the sheer ridiculousness of the rules in amusing fashion. In one scene, the film effectively reduces their tyrannical ideas to a mere two handed comedy routine running on an undeniable element of farce when one girl already caught tries to get the nearby guard to play out a running commentary as he watches on through a slat in the wall.Therein Mullan's film lies a tale about young women having their freedom taken away from them; whose choices, at still a young and some would say premature age, are scorned upon without a moment's thought and dealt with in a way that would have you think they have committed a crime along the lines of murder. The film follows an array of characters but is without a definitive central lead, the film more-a-depiction of collative sufferings and hardships shared by that of four girls. They are Margaret (Duff); Rose (Duffy); Harriet (Walsh) and Bernadette (No one) - the most radiant of these being that of No one's Bernadette, whose screen presence and the way she comes across on the screen gives off a fascinating sense of both individualism, sexiness, and vulnerability whenever she is present. They each have their own respective introductions, but these are constructed as if the girls are would-be members of one of The Magnificent Seven, or perhaps even a team of commandos in some old war B-movie who're found; rounded up and then reprimanded so as to be thrust into a melting pot of hostilities and conflict.Our characters are banded together and lumped as one in a covenant-come-institute run by a number of nuns, a covenant so prison-like and unforgiving in its nature that we expect searchlights; sirens; yapping guard dogs and other general mise-en-scene associated with prison camps to rear up when an early sequence depicting an inmate putting into action an escape plan unfolds. The girls are there on account of their insubordination born out of a variety of actions more broadly linked to sin, lust and sexualised altercations; that is to say, the indulging in said activities, or activities along these lines, to a point that the powers-that-be consider it a breach of threshold. In the aforementioned Iran and other such places, a woman can be stoned to death if it means she was found guilty of marital indecency. Here, one girl is jumped in the aftermath of a wedding party by a male cousin who quite likes the look of her, and after grassing on him, SHE is the one dragged off to what is essentially a correctional facility as punishment.Harriet and Rose are there out of the fact they had children born out of wedlock, be assured that any contact with the new born has to be made strictly under the radar of authority. Bernadette winds up at the facility on account of the pleasures she garners from being the centre of all the boy's attention whilst static in the playground, a status and its illegality epitomised by a composition over Bernadette's shoulder from her front which blurs out the busy activity of all the other girls at her orphanage as they move around reiterating just alienated she is from standardised feminine behaviour. The film as a whole is a triumph; a reminder that while we're all off policing other nations and educating them on how western methods and the like are superior to certain others', it wasn't so long ago that certain western nations themselves were implementing harsh, unremitting punishments unto that of their own. Catholicism is one of the most popular religions in the world; here in this chapter of its existence, it lets itself down and it is to the film's credit that this is brought to our attention at a time when one of the world's other more predominant religions, Islam, is receiving a dressing down on account of their own inferior ways of dealing with minority groups as well as the female gender.

The Magdelene Sisters is a good portrayal of the very real behaviour of nuns. I am English and emigrated to Canada with my family. I attended a catholic school which was run by these social misfits, and from my very first day, I was persecuted for the following crimes: I had a short hair cut, my hand writing was not neat, I did not know the words to the Canadian national anthem, I had an English accent, I was good at drawing, I failed to smile at the right time during assembly, I slipped on some ice in the school grounds and hurt myself. etc., etc., etc. I was hit countless times during my few months there - before I left the horrible place. I was constantly referred to as "the green horn Englishman",mocked and imitated because of my accent, and belittled because I didn't know the Canadian national anthem, which we were required to sing every morning before lessons began - (I'd only been in the country weeks - I soon learned it). I was kept behind after school regularly because my handwriting was "unacceptable", causing me to miss my bus home (I had a long way to travel). I was once hit across the back of my head with the words "you write like a boy, you talk like a boy - you even look like a boy". I was eight years old. My sister, who was ten, received remarkably similar treatment. I was terrified to tell my parents because I thought they would speak to the nuns and I would be worse off. Instead they thankfully took my sister and me out of school after she admitted what was going on. I have nothing but contempt for these people. I feel that anything which exposes them as they really are can only be of value to society, above all, for the protection of children.