Film: Deeply moving and deeply distrubring, Magdalene Sisters proves powerful

Do you believe in mortal sin? What is mortal sin? Murder? Suicide? Heresy? Premarital sex? Who decides?

Writer and director Peter Mullen exposes the insider history of Irish asylums run by the Catholic Magdalene Sisterhood from the early 1960s through 1996. Such institutions existed as correctional facilities for women deemed guilty of mortal sin in accordance with the scripture-based notion of absolving one's sins through penance, exertion and hard labor.

Mullen follows the experiences of three women entering the asylum in 1964: Rose, who gave birth out of wedlock; Margaret, raped by her cousin at a family wedding; and Bernadette, an orphan condemned for flaunting her beauty and inciting male temptation. These women were sent into virtual exile from society and scorned for their visible sexuality, which they wielded intentionally or unknowingly. Female sexuality exemplified the greatest strength--and the greatest weakness--of human vice. The Magdalene orders sought to elevate human purity, and atone for original sin by punishing the available scapegoats.

Once committed, the women were physically and emotionally abused to the brink of psychological dissolution. Punished for any attempt at communication, they were deprived the comfort of human contact with either their families or each other. The metamorphosis of each woman is fascinating, as she teaches herself to endure her situation while retaining her identity and re-evaluating her faith.

How do you hold onto your faith, having seen it warped and misused beyond recognition? Each woman must decide between abandoning the faith that betrayed her or abandoning herself to faith in desperation.

Widely criticized as a campaign against the Catholic Church, Mullen's film does seem a bit one-sided. Though the three young women are realized as whole, fully dimensional characters, the nuns remain flat, prototypical "bad guys." The juxtaposition between well-developed victims and shallowly portrayed antagonists undermines the artistic merit, the emotional impact and the intended message of the film. Whatever the extent of Mullen's biases toward his subject, The Magdalene Sisters remains a gripping testament to the power of faith--and to the power of its guardians.