The Magdalene Sisters is a 2002 film written and directed by Peter Mullan, about 4 teenage girls who were sent to Magdalene Asylums, (also known as 'Magdalene Laundries'), homes for women who were labelled as "fallen" by their families or society. The homes were maintained by individual religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.
Peter Mullan has remarked that the film was initially made because victims of Magdalene Asylums had received no closure in the form of recognition, compensation, or apology, and many remained lifelong devout Catholics. Former Magdalene inmate Mary-Jo McDonagh told Mullan that the reality of the Magdalene Asylums was much worse than depicted in the film.
The movie is a fictionalized account of life in the Magdalene Laundries, inspired by the real life stories of women interviewed about their time in them.
Set in Ireland, beginning in 1964, so-called 'fallen' women were considered sinners who needed to be redeemed. The film follows the stories of four young women - Margaret (raped by her cousin), Bernadette (too beautiful and coquettish), Rose (an unmarried mother) and Crispina (an intellectually disabled unmarried mother) - who are all forced by their families or caretakers into the Magdalene Asylum. The film details the disastrous lives of the four girls whilst they are inmates of the laundries, portraying their harsh daily regimen, their squalid living conditions and the oppressive nature of the Catholic faith at the time.
Each woman suffers unspeakable cruelty and violence from the Mother Superior, Sister Bridget, despite her gentle-faced appearance and outwardly soft-spoken demeanour. She is characterized as sadistic and almost inhuman at times, as conveyed through her merciless beating of Rose in full view of Bernadette, or when she mockingly laughs at Una as she hopelessly clutches at her fallen hair locks. It is never made explicit whether Sister Bridget needlessly behaves tyrannically or if she earnestly believes her actions necessary in the eyes of God (it could also be seen as internalised misogyny).
The film also criticises the hypocrisy and corruption within the staff of the laundries. Sister Bridget relishes the money the business receives and it is suggested that little of it is distributed appropriately. Those who liken themselves to Mary Magdalene, who deprived herself of all pleasures of the flesh including food and drink, eat hearty breakfasts of buttered toast and bacon while the working women subsist on oatmeal. In one particularly humiliating scene, the women are forced to stand naked in a line after taking a communal shower. The nuns then hold a "contest" on who has the most pubic hair, biggest bottom, biggest breasts and more. The corruption of the resident priest, Father Fitzroy, is made very clear through his sexual abuse of Crispina.
Three of the girls are shown, to some extent, to triumph over their situation and their captors. Margaret, although she is allowed to leave by the intervention of her younger brother, does not leave the asylum without leaving her mark. When she deliberately asks Sister Bridget to step aside for her to freely pass and is sharply shot down, Margaret falls to her knees in prayer. The Mother Superior is so surprised, she only moves past her after the Bishop tells her to come along. Bernadette and Rose finally decide to escape together, trashing Sister Bridget's study in search for the key to the asylum door and engaging her in a suspenseful confrontation. The two girls escape her clutches and are helped to return to the real world by a sympathetic relative, their story optimistically ending when Rose boards a coach bound for a ferry across the Irish Sea to Liverpool (in Protestant England, out of the reach of the Irish Catholic establishment) and Bernadette becomes an apprentice hairdresser. Crispina's end, however, is not a happy one; she spends the rest of her days in a mental institution (where she was sent to silence her from revealing the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Father Fitzroy) and she dies of anorexia at age 24.
The epilogue to the film gives a brief description of the lives of four of the inmates after the girls leave the asylum by the late 1960s. It is noted that the last Magdalene asylum closed in 1996. --Wiki
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