Barnes & Noble

This well-made but harrowing drama offers an unflinching look at modern-day institutionalized cruelty that borders on the barbaric. It tells the true stories of several young Irish women sentenced to indefinite penal servitude in the Magdalene Laundries, which were operated by the Catholic Church's Sisters of Mercy. Writer-director Peter Mullan focuses on three characters, each accused of different "crimes": Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), raped by a relative at a family gathering; Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), a flirtatious orphan; and the unmarried Rose (Dorothy Duffy), who chose to bear her child rather than seek an abortion, only to be condemned anyway. What's particularly fascinating about The Magdalene Sisters is how closely it resembles the old-fashioned "women in prison" movies of yesteryear. There is a relentlessly evil "warden" in sadistic Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), a fellow inmate turned snitch (Mary Murray), and a mentally handicapped, emotionally fragile prisoner (Eileen Walsh) who is ready to crack. In another nod to prison-genre tropes, the girls suffer abuse at the hands of their warders -- including a priest -- and offer sexual favors in exchange for opportunities to escape. But Mullan doesn't employ these familiar situations exploitatively; he does so to highlight the extraordinary nature of this prison held over from the Middle Ages, a tradition jarringly out of place with Western Europe in the 20th century. The film's detractors have condemned it as a "hit" on the Catholic Church, but the validity of Mullan's claims have been borne out recently by million-dollar settlements to victims of the Magdalene institutions (the last of which closed only eight years ago). Given that their operation was such a recent phenomenon, The Magdalene Sisters is far more shocking than it would have been as a story set hundreds of years ago. But it's also an extremely well crafted movie that you won't easily forget. Ed Hulse

All Movie Guide

One of the Catholic Church's most infamous institutions is the focus of this controversial independent feature from Scottish actor and erstwhile director Peter Mullan. Set in 1964, The Magdalene Sisters hones in on the Magdalene convent, a place where purportedly wayward young women have been sent by their families for reform. Many of the girls are locked up in the institution for questionable "sins," and the movie presents several of them as case studies: Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff), who is sent away after being sexually assaulted by a cousin at a wedding; Rose (Dorothy Duffy) and Crispina (Eileen Walsh), who are both unwed mothers; and Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), whose licentiousness has raised the ire of her former orphanage. It soon becomes clear that the reformatory is more of a manual-labor prison, however, as their girls are forced to work long hours and endure endless physical humiliation and abuse at the hands of the head nun, Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan). As their degradation at the hands of the convent's administrators increases, each girl plots her escape, but each finds that she's never far enough from the sisters' all-encompassing reach. The Magdalene Sisters premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the festival's top prize, the Golden Lion; the Vatican officially condemned the film after its premiere. Michael Hastings

Washington Post

Mullan's movie is admiringly uncompromising. He refuses to augment the horrors with relief. Desson Howe

Chicago Sun-Times

1/2
A harrowing look at institutional cruelty, perpetrated by the Catholic Church in Ireland, and justified by a perverted hysteria about sex. Roger Ebert

Los Angeles Times

Graced with performers who bring a purity of emotion to their work, the film is always dramatically convincing. There is a fundamental air of truth about it, a sense that, horrific though things seem, this is how it must have been. Kenneth Turan

Product Details

• UPC: 786936233094
• Source: MIRAMAX
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: English, Français
• Subtitles: English, Français, Español
• Time: 2:00:00
• Sales Rank: 14,396

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