Our Lady Mary Magdalene of Ireland

1001 Movies To Watch Before Your Netflix Subscription Dies, Part 30
Peter Mullan (writer/director), The Magdalene Sisters

In 1964, three women from different parts of Ireland find themselves ripped from their lives and forced into the Magdalene laundry. Overseen by battalions of hard-faced nuns, the girls, none older than twenty, are forced to toil as penance for sexual sins most haven’t even committed yet. They struggle under the convent’s harsh rule, which literally desires to control their souls. But they keep one eye on the outside, and plan for their eventual escapes.

Officially called “Magdalene Asylums,” the Magdalene laundries started out as places prostitutes and other “fallen women” could rebuild their lives and achieve redemption. Many were established throughout the world, including Britain and America; the Irish laundries, however, became an unmitigated horror show. When the nuns operating the laundries discovered they were making a profit, their original Christian mission went by the wayside.

Writer-director Peter Mullan focuses on three women among the dozens held captive at the laundry. Rose (Dorothy Duffy) is an unmarried mother, anathema in a Catholic country. Margaret (Anne-Marie Duff) was raped. And Bernadette (Nora-Jane Noone), an orphan raised in a church home, is simply too pretty and warm to boys’ attention; the nuns at her orphanage believe she’ll inevitably produce more orphaned children for the church to raise.

All three get shipped to the laundry by relatives or caretakers—it’s somewhat murky where the story takes place, though it was inspired by UN reports of abuses at a laundry based in Cork. Mother Superior of the facility, Sister Bridget (Geraldine McEwan), comes across as soft-spoken and amiable to her wards. However, it quickly becomes clear she relishes power, demonstrated by moments of casual sadism, and cares mostly about money.

The girls remain trapped in the laundry for four years, working ten-hour days and six-day weeks. As the only reliable service able to process the laundry produced by a large swath of Ireland, their services are in constant demand. And we see it pays well: the nuns eat buttered toast and bacon for breakfast. The girls who do the actual work, however, eat oatmeal and water.

Worse, the girls are subject to constant abuse. Not only are they overworked by the nuns, and physically punished for insignificant infractions, but the pries, Father Fitzroy, who wants to reform the laundry, becomes corrupted by the culture and starts sexually abusing a developmentally disabled girl. The men who drive the delivery lorries, meanwhile, who are the girls’ only contact with the outside world, often trade sex for favors.

Mother Superior (Geraldine McEwan) leads a line of trapped workers (left to
right Anne-Marie Duff, Nora-Jane Noone, and Dorothy Duffy) in The Magdalene Sisters

Mullan focuses on character drama on character, letting larger history speak for itself. Unlike Neil Jordan, writer-director of Michael Collins, Mullan doesn’t lecture about history, or make Irish facts digestible for international audiences. He instead forces characters into an intolerable situation, and lets their actions speak for themselves. His heroines have two choices: either conform to a corrupt system, or break out by force.

The Magdalene nuns repeatedly promise the girls, when they’ve achieved salvation, they’ll be permitted back into the world. As years drag on, however, and the girls find themselves unconsciously mimicking the power hierarchies that control them, we start to realize: not everyone will escape. They’ve internalized the nuns’ system of abuse. The convent has lost interest in salvation; as Bernadette observes once, they only care whether the work gets done.

The cozy relationship between Church and government during the early Irish Republic often corrupted both institutions. Police helped dirty priests cover their sins, while idealistic young clergy often tried to change the system from within, but found the system changing them. Ireland consistently proves a point I’ve long believed: individual Christians often create powerful good, but the Church, like any other institution, serves mainly to protect itself.

In 1993, long after the events depicted here, property developers working land formerly owned by Dublin’s Magdalene laundry uncovered a mass grave containing 155 skeletons of unidentifiable girls. By this time, the Dublin convent was Ireland’s last Magdalene laundry, and the outcry generated by this discovery forced its closure. Only after the laundries ended did anyone officially discuss their existence, or the church-state relationship that made their abuses possible.

Peter Mullan made this movie partly to raise awareness of the Magdalene abuses, which weren’t officially redressed until 2013. Within Ireland, this movie helped make these crimes visible, but international audiences should watch too. Only by staring directly at the history of religious intolerance and state corruption, can mass populations, Christian or secular, ensure these crimes aren’t repeated. Because bigotry like this still exists in our world.