It’s Scum with nuns, at a cinema near you.

Peter Mullan is angry, and it’s scary. When his brutal drama about the Catholic Church’s Magdalene “asylums” won the big prize at Venice Film Festival last year, it was immediately condemned. Vatican City Radio, not known for its impartiality, denounced it as “an angry and rancorous provocation” and priests were quickly dispatched to film people as they entered screenings. Mullan’s been a marked man ever since.

“The Vatican is like a huge kind of magician’s club,” says the unrepentant actor/director. “The more you look into it the more awful it becomes. And they’re laughing at us. That’s when I get angry.” So was he surprised to win an award in a Catholic country? “Not really. And anyway, winning a gong has no impact on an audience. I’ve sat watching Palme d’Ors with only two people.” And he should know, having won Best Actor at Cannes in 1998 for Ken Loach’s My Name Is Joe.

“I don’t think The Magdalene Sisters reveals anything we didn’t already know,” he admits. “The Catholic Church has abused so many people for so long. For me, the most shocking aspect is that the last asylum only closed in 1996. And I left out innumerable stories. I’ve been told of murders that were committed. But if I put that in, the Church would say, ‘So where’s the evidence?’”

The “asylums” doubled as laundries all over the Catholic world, with the girls spending every waking hour either being abused or scrubbing clothes to cleanse them of their “sins” – things like flirting with boys or being a rape victim. So why didn’t they all just run away? “It was about the imprisonment of the mind,” explains Mullan, himself a Catholic. “When they’re in your head the way they’re in your head, you’re up against god and nothing less. You’re up against your immortal soul.”

In the US, Catholic groups are currently trying to get the film banned via Internet protests. “They’re very brave behind their little f**king computers,” says the Scottish director, unperturbed. “When we showed the film in New York, they gave me extra bodyguards. But we had two sold-out screenings and there were no protestors… To use a Glaswegian colloquialism, they’re shitebags.” And I, for one, wouldn’t dare argue. Jonathan Carter 20 February 03

empire online:
...The performances are compelling...
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film four:
...lingers in the mind long after if ends...
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useful link: rlff: the magdalene sisters