The Magdalene Sisters
In an attempt to appease my wife and view more movies that don't involve people's heads in vices or baseball bat beatings or general violent death I rented the Magdalene Sisters. I'm not sure what I expected when I rented this, only that the main characters were all women and there didn't seem to be any Mafia hitmen in it.
The story follows the lives of three (you could say four) young Catholic girls in 1960's Ireland and their banishment to a laundry after being deemed undesirable. The girls aren't related, except that they've all committed a mortal no-no and have very unsympathetic parents. They are whisked away, in each case without any real explanation, to a laundry ran by Catholic nuns who use their enforced labor to turn a tidy profit. The idea is that they atone for their sins and save their mortal souls. After watching this movie I would think that Hell would be a better place.
I thought the film was well shot and well acted by everyone involved. I felt sorry for the girls who were held prisoner and lamented the fact that the film shows old women in the background…this led me to believe that they all could expect to be there a long time. I hated the nuns who ran the place and felt disgust at their lack of sympathy and abuse of power. And I hoped throughout the whole movie that the girls would get their revenge!
The movie moved along well and didn't get bogged down by dwelling on any one abuse of the prisoners by going into too much detail. I like to think that the filmmaker respected my intellect and let me put the pieces together for myself. The movie is laced with tragedy, but it never became overwhelming. I would say they did a good job of keeping the gravity of the character's situation at the forefront, but not to a degree of hopelessness.
The movie ends without the great justice of revenge for all the wrongs perpetrated on these young women. While that was disappointing, the sobering reality of the story made the ending seem just right to me. You get a little blurb on the life of each girl after their experiences portrayed in the film and you can tell that there was no sugar coating. This was a pretty dark film from beginning to ending and it definitely didn't leave me with any sort of warm fuzzy feeling. It's a stark tale based on real events and not for the faint of heart, but worth the time it takes to view it.