So I Saw…
The Magdalene Sisters and The Hulk on DVD recently.
Magdalene Sisters is good if predictable, and a sobering reminder of the damages religious hysteria can inflict, especially upon the young. Quoting the synopsis on RottenTomatoes.com, it’s:
“…based on real events that took place in Ireland from the 1960s until 1996 when an estimated 30,000 young women, considered by their families to have committed sexual sins, were sent away from their homes to earn penitence working in profit-making laundries run by the Sisters of Magdalene Order. However, the acts the girls committed to have been sent to these miserable prisons were clearly not punishable. What’s worse, the nuns were cruel money grubbers who worked the girls to the point of exhaustion, and used poor living conditions and psychological abuse to break and brainwash the girls into subservience. The awful treatment the nuns gave these innocent young women was terrifying, and the ways the girls suffered were utterly disturbing.
[Director/Screenwriter Peter] Mullen designed the fictional characters in the film based on interviews with actual survivors of the laundries…”
The DVD is perhaps best worth seeing for a documentary which is included on the disc, featuring those women on whose experiences the film was based speaking for themselves. Also for a terrific performance in the film proper by Nora-Jane Noone, an Irish, teenaged actress.
As for The Hulk, well, let me officially be the last to say, it’s pretty godawful. So much long, drawn-out, portentious dialogue you end up yelling at the screen–I did, anyway–“For god’s sake, this isn’t Shakespeare, it’s a Marvel comic book! Have some fucking fun!”
I’m all for taking comics seriously as source material, but this is like trying to hold up a boulder with wet tissue paper: It’s just not supportable. When the film and title character finally does break free and starts smashing up some stuff, it’s right on. But it takes about an hour and a half to get to that point, and it’s too little, too late.
