In the Name of…

By Rebecca Redshaw

More than two years ago, I wrote my first Picture This! column. I wrote at that time that I would be reviewing not only current releases but unseen treasures that slipped by the popcorn masses. With the dark hole of cinema created by the time gap post-Oscar releases and pre-summer bonanzas, I perused the video store for just such a title.

The Magdalene Sisters is a film that should have been double billed with The Passion of the Christ. At least that way the marketing genius of Mel Gibson and his throngs of believers could have balanced out the actor’s vision with the stark reality of what the church, at least the Roman Catholic Church, endorsed for years.

Set in Ireland in 1964, this fictional telling of a very real way of life begins with the commitment of three young girls to unpaid servitude in the Sisters of Mercy laundry. (That is not a typo – the movie is set in 1964 – the last of the actual laundries closed in the 1990’s.) Their sins wouldn’t even stack up to the grounding of a junior high teenager for transgressions today, but the nuns were anything but merciful in the treatment and imprisonment of these defenseless girls.

Written and directed by Peter Mullan, The Magdalene Sisters, complete with beatings, naked humiliation, and desperate suicide attempts, may seem a bit farfetched in this day in age. I rarely recommend the bells and whistles added on most DVDs – they are usually produced for hardcore fans with a focus on sales, á la Director’s Cuts – but the addition of the documentary, Sex in a Cold Climate, to this disc is at once moving and disturbing.

Watch the feature first – the actresses are wonderfully cast and the ensemble, girls and nuns, are frighteningly believable – then watch the documentary.

The lives of the women interviewed give a glimpse of what happens after these crimes against humanity in the name of the Father. No one escapes unscathed.

The Magdalene Sisters is not a feel good movie but it is a part of history that should not be buried by the glitz of a blockbuster or the censorship of a country.