August 25, 2003

I like most of the Irish I've met. However there is a dark side to Irish culture and history. See the new movie "The Magdalene Sisters."

Posted by: Joel on August 26, 2003 07:01 PM

Ireland is the only country I have ever visited where a customs agent, while checking my passport, invited me to immigrate to his beautiful country. I will never forget that amazing moment.

Posted by: snowball on August 27, 2003 12:52 AM

I was going to comment of the excellence of Black Bush and other Irish whiskey but Joel "got my Irish up."

First of all, how can any one base one's opinion on a movie as if it were some sort of ex-cathedra infallible statement by "anti-Pope" Oliver Stone or in this case Peter Mullans? Peter Mullans is not Irish, of course, but Scottish; he is a Roman Catholic as he has claimed in articles. Being of Scottish Catholic origin myself I know a thing or two about Scottish Catholics. Many Scottish Catholics are very devout and are the remnants of a Gaeldom (In the Western Isels, Arygll, Inverness and Glasgow) that was very Catholic prior to the Reformation. The establishment of both the Church of Scotland (Calvinistic) and the Scottish Episcopal Church (Anglican communion), the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the Scottish Catholic church has been a church of the dispossesed, the poor and the minority. Even today one does not advertise that one is a Roman Catholic -even to fellow Roman Catholics. Scottish Catholics long ago learned to keep their heads down and even create a paper trail of Anglican communions if necessary. Unlike Ireland, Scotland has long been religiously diverse. Intermarriage with evangelical protestants and Jews -Glasgow has one of the oldest Jewish communities in Britain was very common for the very fact that people who were Catholic or Jewish kept it under wraps. People did not celebrate religious holidays openly on the Sabbath (this was true until the 1960's). Remember Catholic Emancipation only came in 1829 and Jewish Emancipation (full citizenship) in 1858. If there was a parish where the Catholics were the majority it usually was the poorest. Those few who were not poverty stricken suffered unbelievable ridicule, bullying and prejudice (see the stories of Arthur Conan Doyle and A. J. Cronin for example). In addition to this poor Catholics in Scotland working in the Red Clydeside because strongly influenced by Communism and Labour Socialism -much more so than the Irish- with whom naturally they usually had familiy ties. I mention this background only so that people may understand that a Scottish Catholic oftimes is a curious mix of anti-Irish prejudice, shame at being poor in a class-ridden society and uncertain theologically from being bashed from all quarters as to the evil of his church. In universities and in the arts the popular thing was (and still is as far as I know) is to be an openly BAD Catholic that is a repentent and lapsed one. Only then can one be marginally accepted. One might recall for example that Tony Blair's wife and children are Roman Catholic but Blair himself remains a Scottish Episcopalian, a very safe place to be (always) politically and theologically. In Scotland, Scottish Episcopalians were THE church of the landed aristocracy, formerly Roman Catholic, who settled on this safe middle ground so a not to endanger their political rights, privileges and property.
I only say this so that one can understand where Peter Mullans is coming from.

That having been said,what about Mullan's "original" movie? First of all it is not original being derived from a BBC documentary called Sex in a Cold Climate which if you can see it, is far less lurid and sensational acount of the Magdalene homes. What is their historical basis?

Like the workhouses of Dickensian England they existed. The Magdalene homes were set up in the 19th century as a refuge for single mothers, widows as well and other "fallen women". In those days anyone woman who openly was sexual outside of marriage was considered a prostitute and in fact -some of these ladies were members of the "oldest profession." It was their misfortune to be defenseless and without connections. They were, in a very real sense, orphans of the brutal societal upheavals that took place in the jarring transition from rural to city life in the wake of the virtual holocaust of the Great Hunger and the "satanic mills" of the early industrial revolution.

By the 20th century, the Magdalene homes were being run by the Sisters of Mercy -mainly in Ireland- using the "socially undesirable" women as unpaid stoop labor as laundry service for rural resort hotels, schools, orphanages, universities, church manses and so forth.
So the story itself has SOME factual basis unlike widely popular 19th century accounts of nunneries in Boston being brothels and dens of iniquity. I make this reference because "The Magdalene Sisters" seems to have an indirect connection to those sensational, biased almost totally fabricated anti-Catholic stories.

Peter Mullans is a lot like Oliver Stone. He blurs the line between fact and fiction and this in my view seriously undercuts the integrity of the film. The stories of the imprisoned girls are clearly fictional composties and yet Mullan ends the film with phoney telling us "what happened to poor x" . This gives the impression that the characters had been researched and that their stories are real and documented when they were just impressions by the director.

When I see a film like this -I felt it was a PC tedious film with a real anti-Catholic bias I wondered immediately about the truth of his account. What was real and what was made up? As in Oliver Stone's JFK -a repulisive exploitative, propagandistic film in my opinion- I was left thinking did Mullans really fairly represent the Sisters of Mercy and Ireland of the 1960's? Did Mullans play fast and easy with the facts so that he could show the Full Monty and fat gluttonous hypocritcal nuns?

It so happens that I had personal contact with Irish -and Scottish- Sisters of Mercy in South America, and in the New York area and other places. They were courageous, sturdy, hard-working, austere women without ostentation. Perhaps there were some retired ones who turned to fat but the ones I met were lean almost sinewy from years of fasting, and incessant hard work among the poor of the favelas of Brazil, Ecuador and the slums of the Domincan Republic and Haiti. In fact on one ocassion an "Irish" sister of mercy came to our parish to ask for fund and I recognized instantly her Govan/ West Glasgow accent and I felt compelled to introduce myself when I made my contribution. We had a long talk -she knew my father's school and home parish- and we corresponded for a time after that losing contact due to my peripatetic existence at that time in the late 70's and early 80's. I was deeply touched by her deep faith, her love of humanity and her Mother Teresa like tolerance and charity. I remember our encounter had a deep spiritual quality. Things had been tough for me -I had no steady job or prospects at the time- but I gave freely. I remember telling her, "sister, I have gas in the tank, someplace to sleep, a few dollars in my pocket, a young back and this is America. Compared to others I have it easy and it isn't enough to just give the crumbs from the feast is it?" We spoke of the wonderful men and women who ministered to the dispossed cleared Highland and Island folk of Eriskay and Mull people like Father Allan MacDonald and the lesser known Dean Collins, people who turned their backs on their bonny land and became virtual indentured servants and prisoners of the grim garrets of Govan or exiles on the plains of Manitoba. I told her I gave because "cuimhnich mi air na daoine bhon thaing mi" ( I remember the people from which I came). She said, "you know there is this prejudice that the Scots are tight-fisted but people who say that cannot lived among the common folk of Scotland. They are generous and true and always willing to share what they have even if it is little. They have a great faith that would not forsake a father or mother or beloved kinsman and they lay down their lives for their friends and the freedom of others. What greater love is there than that? What greater generosity is there than that?"

The Catholic Church, like all human institutions, is human and flawed but how many NOW women dedicate their lives and youth to the many who are poor? Despite ever calumny and lie the Catholic church does great works of charity and education and is, upon the whole, and it is upon the whole that such things must be based, an institution dedicated to peace and charity not Murder incorporated.

I close with some quotations from Catholic News about the film. I think the critique of the film is fair-minded and totally lacking in fanticism. If you like you can look up the entire review but I have some excepts by Gerri Pare and David DiCerto in quotations below.

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/movies/03mv128.htm

Gerri Pare and David DiCerto on Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters":

“However, Mullan puts forth an oversimplified, worst-case scenario in which every nun is a monster and the only priest connected with the laundry has forced a simple young woman confined there to yield to his sexual demands.”

MUNRO's commentary. This reminds me of a visit to a Russian convent during the old USSR. An old Scot travelling there, after hearing incredible stories of decadence and depravity from the Soviet guide merely asked a question :"You seriously want us to believe that there wasn't ONE good and holy nun in this whole place?." The Soviet guide got red in the face and did not answer.

Gerri Pare and David DiCerto on Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters":

“The nuns pictured are so uniformly sadistic and hypocritical that they make the infamous Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" seem like Mother Teresa.”
****
“The nuns, presented as consistently evil, money-grubbing, merciless hags, have no emotional depth. They are as exaggerated in their sadism as Ingrid Bergman is in celestial benevolence in "The Bells of St. Mary's" -- the film Sister Bridget sheds a crocodile tear over at a Christmas screening. Not one ounce of human kindness -- not to mention Christian compassion -- can be found under any wimple or collar.”

MUNRO's commentary. 40's Films like "The Bells of St. Mary", and the "Keys of the Kingdom" were idealized but at least they had the virtue of portraying Irish (and in the case of Keys of the Kingdom, Scottish) Catholics in a positive light. Surely I say some Catholic religious were working for good in a selfless way-as they saw it -even though they did not embrace euthanasia or the feminist agenda abortion and other "reproductive rights"-. My mother, aunt and grandmother cried when they saw DAVID COPPERFIELD, the SOUND OF MUSIC or the BELLS OF ST. MARY and I cried with them. As a thinking man I know part of the reason I like those films is that they have sentimental associations with people whom I loved dearly who are "a' gain" and whom I "sall meet nae mair." When Mullan makes a cheap shot at my mother's favorite films he is almost attacking Motherhood. What I am saying is that there was a crude lack of respect for traditions and memories that many people, not just me, cherish.

Gerri Pare and David DiCerto on Peter Mullan's "The Magdalene Sisters":

“The result is a cavalcade of cartoonish vignettes which present to viewers about as nuanced a picture of Irish nuns as 1915's "The Birth of a Nation" did of African-Americans.” In place of a sensitive examination of abuse of religious power, Mullan's simplistic approach in depicting all the religious in his script as gleeful villains only serves to undermine the credibility of his film.

My senitments exactly! The female internees in the film are not sympathetic people really -they are far from saints - practically wild animals- and they shock but have no power to save themselves.

The greatest irony in Mullan's intellectually confused film is that his Scottish (Jesuit?) boyhood teachings on original sin seemed to have left a deep mark. The result is hardly a humanist film but one that reflects however imperfectly a Catholic worldview on original sin!

Recently I was at Dachau Concentration camp (while Horsefeather's was downing Black Bush) and the horror of that murder school of the Holocaust was unremitting except for the small religous chapels (the Jewish one was the most moving to me and I prayed there not in the Catholic chapel) and a bouquet of flowers left by German and Israeli school children who had visited together in an attempt at reconciliation, rememberance and what the Spanish call "conviviencia" the need to have mutual lives and experiences for love, friendship and respect to develop.

Some people come away from Dachau and belief that militarism, authoritarianism and blind obediance or perhaps a flaw in the German character.
caused that murder machine.

I came away instead thinking of the deep tragedy of man's inhumanity to his fellow man. Dachau confirmed my belief in the deep depravity of mankind and that includes men and women and our tendency to violence and evil. Dachau confirmed my belief in the proper training and raising of children in a loving environment which is the need for a good paideia to civilize man and make the good citizen.

I speak, of course, as a Catholic who does not believe that "education alone " is the answer or the "power of their ideas" but rather the mystery of it mankind's existence, his quest for meaning and understanding the universal need for God's saving grace.

This is Original Sin as I understand it, an attempt, through a glass but darkly, to understand man's irrepressible, indelible dark side.

Man has , as I have written before, a good side too and , I believe an instinct for altrusim especially for one's family or group.

But man is surely the "Most Dangerous Game". Like Dogs, our close friends, we are clannish by nature beasts of the pack.

We survived the hard way by fighting for territory, by being killers of the outsider, as exterminators of species.

Besides being descendants of killers were are probably descendants of cannibals, rapists, slavers and head-hunters as well and I speak for all races and religions not just the white or the black or the brown.

The Gael like the Aztec still vaguely remembers his brutal past. Toynbee remarked after all that the Iron Age in Europe ended only yesterday in Scotland on the afternoon of April 16, 1746. He called the Highlanders to be the "last barbarians" of Europe. I think this affinity for closeness to a barbaric pagan past is what has always given the Highlander an affinity for the American Indian, the Punjabi and other exotic fringe people.

So does The Magdalene Sisters -like Angela's Ashes show the dark side of Irish society? McCourt's Angela's Ashes did a much better job of showing Irish poverty and the Pharisess of De Valera's Catholic Ireland in 1930's and 40's. Peter Mullan by contrast puts forth a superficial, steretypical, worst-case scenario in which every nun is sadistic hideous monster. Of course you can't have a up to date "Catholic" film without a knock at celbacy and the hypocrisy of the lusting priesthood. The only priest connected with the Sisters of Mercy abused his authority by seducing a simple-minded young Irishwoman. Of course, this being the movies, she gets back at him by putting poisonous nettles in his underwear and of course he tears off his clothes in the middle of Holy Communion while the young Irishwoman (improbably) shouts that he is not a man of God. Mullan has it all wrong the reason there were few priests in the movie is that they were too busy chasing little boys. (That's a joke but probably leans closer to the truth).

I know by the way that priests have sexual passions.

One of the priests who performed our wedding ceremony married our sexy maid of honor. They are still happily married (no children however).

But it was all very boring and nice just like my wife's two uncles were were also young priests who could not live in sin with the women the loved. They left the priesthood and got married and lived happily ever after. They have my respect because they were men of honor. Anyone can make a movie showing Marines to be madmen and sadists or Irish Catholic nuns to be fat, gluttonous, perverted sadists. But that doesn't make it true. I would suggest Mullan base his next movie on a BOOK not a movie. If you want to see modern film on Scottish Catholics see Tom Conti's fine film on the life of a teacher in Glasgow's Catholic schools, The Gospel According to Vic (1987)
a.k.a.: "Heavenly Pursuits"
Movie review :"A Scottish comedy about a skeptical teacher at a remedial school, who, having survived miraculously from a fall, is taken for proof of the sainthood of the school's patron namesake."

With Helen Mirren it is very entertaining and Charles Gormley, unlike Peter Mullan, treats Glasgow's Catholic heritage with respect and tenderness as well as gentle humor. It is a sleeper because, without subtitles, Americans miss most of the humor but I liked it better than LOCAL HERO.

http://www.moviegoods.com/movie_product.asp?master%5Fmovie%5Fid=19792&movie%5Fnss=19873284

Posted by: Ricardo Munro on August 27, 2003 01:43 AM

You get what anyone gets. You get a lifetime.

Posted by: Wacker Leslie on December 10, 2003 10:20 PM

If I could get my membership fee back, I'd resign from the human race.

Posted by: Spikol Liz on December 21, 2003 01:07 AM

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