One could argue that he has a point. "The Magdalene Sisters" covers the tragic lives of three girls as they are committed to an abusive convent to repent for such sins as having a child out of wedlock, being attractive and being raped. The head sister explains that "all men are sinners, so we must remove temptation." Why do viewers also have to suffer through such horrors? The film is mainly a series of injustices, challenging the viewer to stand up and fix the world. Watching it, I felt ashamed to know that a world in which such things are possible exists, and that I contribute to it. But the film doesn't have a deep plot, with twists and arcs; it tells the simple truth. And after the film I have yet to change the world.
"The Magdalene Sisters" is a true story. The characters are real people, the convent a real place. Girls were sent to such convents by their families or caretakers in Ireland for sins committed against the church. Supposedly a lifetime of repentance spent doing laundry and earning money for the nuns and the hierarchy will ensure forgiveness. These institutions survived until 1996, and to say that people did not know they existed would be a lie.
One scene, in which a girl is brought back to the convent by her father, leaves the audience in shock. The girl screams at her father to let her leave, to let her come home, all the while calling him "da." He responds by running at her and beating her as she lies on her bed, telling her that she has no family, that she killed her family when she sinned. She stays in the convent.
It is a film about the nature of being trapped-of pain, suffering and endurance. Humans can endure all kinds of pain as long as someone else endures more, and the nuns themselves are clearly not one-dimensional sadists. They too are trapped in the convent, trapped by a repressive society that expects them to remain chaste and to deny the outside world. They abuse others inside the convent where they reign, but outside they are nothing.
At one point Sister Bridget, the head nun, has a young woman committed to an insane asylum. The girl was forced to commit a sexual act with the priest, and upon making a "wild accusation," the nuns send for doctors to take her away. As the doctors leave, Sister Bridget sits and stares out into space. The viewer gets a glimpse into her mind-the only moment that you feel she recognizes what she is doing and what she has become. Her life is unbearable, and so must be the lives of all of the slaves she takes into her convent.
Overall, "The Magdalene Sisters" is a film that everyone should endure. I say endure because you won't enjoy it, no matter how good it is. It isn't paced with humor, and it isn't designed to be entertaining. It shocks you again and again, as did Roman Polanski's "The Pianist." The film makes you angry at the world and leaves you without a conduit for that anger, for it does not submit to easy sentimentality by portraying the eventual destruction of the convents.
Ultimately you leave angry because you know how easy it is to act as the rest of Ireland did-to stand by and do nothing. When faced with horror, so often the world shuts the door. Perhaps the more we watch films like this one, the more capable we will be of looking behind those doors. Perhaps this is why such chronicles of pain must be made. There is no moral relativism that justifies oppression.