20th Anniversary of The Magdalene Sisters
On August 30, 2002, Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters" premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
Peter Mullan came up with the idea to make a film about the inmates of the Magdalen asylums (called "Magdalene laundries" in Ireland) after watching Stephen Humphreys' documentary "Sex in a Cold Climate" (1998). Humphreys' film was intertwined interviews of 4 women placed in Magdalen asylums either because of out-of-wedlock pregnancy or rape or simply because they are "too beautiful".
The film was immediately opposed by the Vatican. However, the jury of the film festival, which was headed by Chinese film star Li Gong, awarded Peter Mullan's film the highest award - the Golden Lion. By the way, that jury included the famous Soviet and Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
A little later, in the same 2002, Peter Mullan's film "The Magdalene Sisters" was nominated for the European Film Award, but lost to Pedro Almodovar's "Hable con ella (Talk to Her)". In the company of "relative losers" along with Mullan's film were Roman Polanski's "The Pianist", the Finnish film "Mies vailla menneisyyttä (A Man Without a Past)" directed by Aki Kaurismäki.
The next year, 2003, British film academics nominated Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters" for the Alexander Korda Award, but awarded this prize to Asif Kapadia's "The Warrior". The company of "relative losers" for Mullan's picture was Stephen Daldry's "The Hours".
In 2004, the French Film Academy nominated "The Magdalene Sisters" for its César Award for Best European Film. But this time Mullan's film was left without the award, which was awarded to the German film "Goodbye, Lenin!" directed by Wolfgang Becker. This time the company "relative losers" for Mullan's picture was Lars von Trier's "Dogville".
Reviews of professional film critics for Peter Mullan's film were rather restrained. Many in one form or another noted the secondary nature of the film in relation to the masterpiece of Milos Forman "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Roger Ebert rated the film 3.5 out of 4 stars. In his review, he noted: ""The Magdalene Sisters" is a harrowing look at institutional cruelty, perpetrated by the Catholic Church in Ireland, and justified by a perverted hysteria about sex.....The movie is not so much an attack on the Catholic Church as on the universal mind-set that allows transgressions beyond all decency, if they are justified by religious hysteria. "
Another authoritative American film critic, James Berardinelli, gave the film 3 stars out of 4 possible and, in his review, described the film "The Magdalen Sisters" as "a disturbing and compelling motion picture that depicts the forces that try to suppress the human spirit, and the strength of these girls in overcoming it.. ... This is a worthwhile movie because it is well-made and encourages viewers to think and feel."
In February 2003, the British edition of The Guardian published an article by Fiachra Gibbons based on an interview with Mary-Jo McDonagh, who spent several years in one of the Magdalen asylums. The article contained a rebuke from Mary-Jo McDonagh to Peter Mullan, who, according to her, too softly portrayed the outrages committed by Catholic priests and nuns against the prisoners of these orphanages. In fact, as McDonagh described in an interview, the torture and humiliation that girls were subjected to in these Catholic institutions was much more cruel and sophisticated than what was shown in the film.
The following figures speak about the assessment of the film by ordinary moviegoers: 63% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users rated the film from 8 to 10. Taking into account this indicator and the above, the rating of Peter Mullan's film "The Magdalene Sisters" according to FilmGourmand version was 8,518, which allowed it to take 323rd Rank in the Golden Thousand.
