When you have a movie about the Catholic Church directed by a man who confesses that his rage against the Church is on every page, I have my doubts whether the film can be an honest portrayal. The movie is “The Magdalene Sisters,” which is about a series of homes set up in the 19th century and which ran until 1996 where young women were sent. Documentarians and this film allege that girls were sent on flimsy pretexts—out-of-wedlock motherhood, being raped, and even being too pretty—where they were allegedly virtual slaves and made to work in for-profit laundries.
I don’t doubt that the places were bad, but were they the very stuff of evil that the movie makes them out to be? I don’t know, but I’m not going to rely on this movie to tell me. Not when the director’s own biases are so well-known in advance.
