MORAL LAW: An interview with The Magdalene Sisters writer/director Peter Mullan. By Warren Curry 8/1/03

(Read the review of The Magdalene Sisters)

"Ewan's getting to be pretty damn unique," says writer/director/actor Peter Mullan, in a lighthearted aside while discussing his grim and eye-opening new film, The Magdalene Sisters. Mullan, who most people are familiar with for his work in front of the camera (My Name Is Joe, Braveheart, Session 9), recently starred in the British film Young Adam (not yet released in the U.S.) with the above-mentioned Ewan McGregor. "Honestly, he is spectacularly handsome and movie stardom suits him."

The Magdalene Sisters, Mullan's searing second effort as a feature filmmaker, is a movie with an agenda. Set in the mid 1960s, it's an unflinching and sharply critical look at Ireland's real-life Magdalene Laundries -- the Catholic Church-run asylums/businesses, which housed allegedly promiscuous young women, whose offenses ranged from pre-marital birth to provocative smiles aimed at the opposite sex. While detained, the women worked and lived in suffocating conditions, all too aware that even the slightest misstep in the quest to atone for their sins could result in violent disciplinary action from the nuns who ran the laundries. Frighteningly, these barbaric institutions remained in existence until 1996.

"They ceased to be economically viable around the late 70s, early 80s," explains Mullan in a thick Scottish accent of why the laundries were finally forced to close shop. "At the time, the Magdalenes provided a very large and cheap workforce," he continues. "For a new historian, I honestly believe there's a thesis to be had that could almost argue the modern "Celtic Tiger" economy is based upon child slave labor. When you add together the Magdalene Asylums and the industrial schools, it's an enormous unpaid workforce of young adults."

Mullan was first inspired to make the film upon viewing a documentary about the laundries in the late 90s. "The story I saw was a documentary called Sex in a Cold Climate on Channel Four," he states. "It was mainly talking heads, and most of the women by the time I saw the documentary had passed away. Most of the women who spoke had been diagnosed as having a terminal illness." Having worked on several occasions as an actor with acclaimed Scottish director Ken Loach, it's no surprise that Mullan views the cinema as a legitimate vehicle to encourage social change. "Part of the motivation to make it was, as a political animal, one might at least be able to raise public awareness that then might put pressure on the Church to start doing, for want of a better word, the right thing."

The relationship between the Church and the women who had been incarcerated in the laundries is still very much a tenuous one. "The most important thing to the women I've met is a genuine apology," comments Mullan. "They're not interested in a written apology. They want a genuine act of contrition on the part of the Church." In the estimation of the director, the reason the Church has been reticent to make amends is strictly an economic matter. "It's a financial organization. They think, 'Well, that's o.k., we'll give you that. Just don't go looking for no compensation.'" He elaborates, "Already, they came up with a package of 180 million euros for children who were the victims of abuse of the clergy of Ireland. It excludes the Magdalene, and the reason it excludes the Magdalene women is because they supposedly went there voluntarily." According to Mullan, the victims realize that monetary overtures can't begin to compensate for the amount of suffering caused by their confinement in the Magdalene Laundries. "It's not going to make up for the child you've not seen in 35, 40 years."

Even in an era of supposed free expression, a film as acerbic as The Magdalene Sisters can still ruffle enough feathers to provoke an extreme response from opponents of the film's subject matter. Such was the case when the movie screened at the 2002 Venice Film Festival, which caused priests from the Vatican to harass those in attendance before the film's screening, even going so far as to tape those entering the theater with camcorders and warning these film-goers that they would now being going to hell. Apparently, the threats did nothing to deter the Venice audience. "They just didn't give a shit," says Mullan somewhat bitterly as he reflects on the situation. "They weren't impressed by that kind of antic. It's the high tech Spanish Inquisition. How dumb is that? The Italians paid no attention."

But it's no accident that Mullan makes movies that elicit impassioned reactions. Judging by how taxing the filmmaking process is for Mullan, the director would be selling himself considerably short if he were to direct films that didn't leave an audience with a strong impression, one way or the other. "Filmmaking is something I have to do, it's not something I particularly I want to do," states Mullan. " Directing's just 24/7, nobody's off your fucking case. Everybody wants a piece of you. You're dizzy by week 2, you're panic stricken by week 3, you're starting to relax by week 4, you're just about having the breakdown by week 5, and then you just finish the film by week 6. It's very masochistic." On a roll, he continues the rant, "And you know that it doesn't finish there; that's the worst thing. You know a year down the line, quite rightly, you're going to face you guys, an audience, your family, and everybody, quite rightly, has an opinion."

On the other hand, Mullan couldn't view his "other" job in any more of a different light. "Acting's a lot more fun -- you wander around spoiled rotten. At the end of the day, you go, 'See you in the pub.' That's a nice job," he comments. "I don't have a lot of time for actors that moan about acting."

Apparently one of these actors is not Ewan McGregor, who Mullan talks about again with great admiration as the roundtable interview ends on a breezy note. Referring to McGregor's performance in Young Adam, he marvels, "McGregor in the film is astonishing -- he would make Montgomery Clift blush." And if that's not grand enough praise, Mullan also mentions, "He's a very lovely guy -- he's a real human being, not an idiotic movie star with the IQ of a Daffodil."

Having spoke about his deadly serious film with press all over the world at this point, it's no wonder why Mullan is happy to talk about a less weighty subject. While his tone in interviews may be amicable, make no mistake that The Magdalene Sisters is a confrontational work made by an aggressive filmmaker who sincerely believes that the cinema can be an effective forum for political expression. And in this instance, that expression makes for a film that is sure to equally stoke the fires of both its fans and detractors.

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