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Thursday, October 23, 2003
the magdalene sisters
 it's review time again, folks, and today we're going to ireland, in the mid 1960s. this film is not fiction. it tells the real fact about a church-run asylum in ireland (run by sisters of mercy), where catholic girls were sent by their families, for years, sometimes lifetimes, for unjust reasons. the story centers on 3 teenage girls who were sent to the asylum to be spiritually rehabilitated from their "moral crime". in the film's first scene, a handsome young priest is singing at a wedding, pounding the bodhran (irish drum). *i love this scene as it adds so much to the dramatic opening*
one girl is invited into a room upstairs by her male cousin. she thinks nothing of it, but a few minutes later, she has been raped. when she tells her friend what has happened, and while the music still plays, the world quickly spreads. the next early morning, her parents put her in a car and take her off to magdalene laundries. it is she, not the rapist, who is punished.
a second girl has just given birth to a baby, to her family's shame. then a priest comes, gives her a pen to sign a paper to give her baby away.
the third girl's "crime" is flirting a little too long with the boys who passed her orphanage, although there's no indication that she has done anything more than tease them a bit. the teachers look worriedly and decide to take the safest route: lock her up. she is sent to the asylum just for being pretty. *mind u, u only had to look potentially at 'risk' before being sent to the asylum. looks like there's a wrong belief in the community at that time that women and their bodies are evil.*
 the girls were forced to work in laundries for 8 to 10 hours each day, 7 days a week, under the strict supervision of the nuns, with 100% of the profits going to the nuns. they're living under lock with no rights, no freedom, no privacy, and no contact with the outside world. they had almost no chance of release. if a girl tries to escape, her head is shaved. while the nuns eat plenty of meals, the girls only get a bowl of very simple food. and when the nuns get bored, they torment the girls by ordering them to stand naked while they vote on who has the smallest breasts and most pubic hair. even a priest has taken sexual advantage of a mentally disabled girl who is sent there by her family who thinks she might fall victim to men if not institutionalized. *how ironic*
the screenplay is based on magdalene victims' testimony. it is so scary to think that such things really happened, that some girls were kept there for their entire lives. and to my surprise, there are several laundries in ireland built on 1700s with the last laundry closed in 1996! the director had such passion for the topic and was successful in making people aware of it. i don't think the writer-director made this movie to accuse finger at catholic church, but at a social system that so easy robbed thousands of women of their liberty with little explanation and no hearing, and also at a human institution run by the greed and corrupt nuns.
"i was an unmarried girl
i'd just turned 27
when they sent me to the sisters
for the way men looked at me."
(joni mitchell, "the magdalene laundries)
stelly @ 9:11 AM
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