Winner of the Golden Lion at the 2002 Venice Film Festival, The Magdalene Sisters is the moving story about the triumph of the human spirit over all. Margaret, Rose and Bernadette arrive together at the Magdalene Laundries, an institution for 'fallen' women, where they will atone for their sins through a regimented life of work and prayer. Overseen by the monstrous Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), they soon learn that friendship and conversation is frowned upon, as they are stripped of their liberty and dignity. Yet within the confines of this regime, a loyal bond develops between feisty Bernadette, headstrong Margaret and dreamy Rose, as they find moments of comfort and even laughter, and a hope that surpasses their daily hardship. Based on the true story of the thousands of women who passed through the gates of the Magdalene Laundries and into a chapter of Ireland's history that will never be forgotten.
Film Crew
- : Peter Mullan
- : Peter Mullan
- : Frances Higson
- : Paul Trijbits
- : Alan J. Wands
- : Rod Stoneman
- : Andrea Occhipinti
- : Nick Powell
- : Ed Guiney
- : Mark Lesse
- : David Gilchrist
- : Matt Dunkley
- : Craig Armstrong
- : Douglas MacDougall
- : Colin Monie
- : Nigel Willoughby
- : Trisha Briggar
Technical Information
- Color
- English
Keywords
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Trailer
Three Irish women find themselves placed in the care of the corrupt nuns of the Magadalene laundries and must summon the courage to survive its abusive regime.-
This extraordinary film is celluloid incendiarism, rabble-rousing cinema with a delirious, delicious edge of black comedy which I estimate to be about 90-95% intentional. Director Peter Mullan's debut feature Orphans had the same explosive seriocomic combination. Then, as now, he's putting out the fire of emotional pain with the gasoline of satire and scorn.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian -
Relating the drama in scenes pared back to the essential, Mullan's increased maturity as a director is evident in his skill at manipulating light and dark dramatic tones, and shifting between moods of anger and plaintive melancholy.Performances are uniformly strong, led by McEwan's contradictory marriage of spitefulness, piety, arch superiority and doddering confusion. The accomplished stage veteran quietly reveals Sister Bridget's rare moments of doubt. The nun's even rarer displays of levity prompt uneasiness and a sense of what the woman might have become in other circumstances.
David Rooney, Variety -
The stark cinematography captures the oppressive mood of the Magdalene institution, while Mullan avoids the more stylish directorial flourishes of his debut and leaves the stage open for his ensemble cast to rise to the occasion. The performances are compelling, with Eileen Walsh a stand-out as Crispina.
Alan Morrison, Empire Magazine -
What the film goes on to dramatise very poignantly is the meekness with which most of the girls accept their fate. So cowed are they by the Asylum's strict regimen and the consciousness of their own stained souls that resistance never seems to occur to them; the camera frames their silent scrubbing and mopping and laundering as something like the toils of the damned. A notable exception to this docility is Bernadette, though her resolve is twisted into a brutish survival instinct that rides roughshod over more simple-minded inmates like Crispina (Eileen Walsh, starkly memorable). Bernadette's determination to escape is a reminder, if one were needed, that what we're really watching is a prison movie. True, there aren't guns and barbed wire, but the girls' rough brown dresses are prison duds, the nuns are warders and Sister Bridget is as scary as any prison governor seen in movies.
Anthony Quinn, The Independent
