Hey, if making bad films is a sin, then this asylum is designed to redeem the impure is just plain perfect for Hilary Duff. Oh no, wait, I'm sorry, this film stars that chick who married James McAvoy, "Anne-Marie" Duff... as well as some girl named Dorothy Duffy, and is… More
Hey, if making bad films is a sin, then this asylum is designed to redeem the impure is just plain perfect for Hilary Duff. Oh no, wait, I'm sorry, this film stars that chick who married James McAvoy, "Anne-Marie" Duff... as well as some girl named Dorothy Duffy, and is about four so-called "sisters", so if this film also starred Hilary and Haylie Duff as the other two Duff, then this film would pretty much be more along the lines of "The Duff Sisters", and it would be terrible, partially because the effectiveness of the disturbances would be diluted by the delight in seeing Hilary Duff getting degraded. Yeah, I'm sorry, that was messed up, and this asylum was messed up, which is ironic, because it's named after the woman who Jesus saved from violence and degradation at the hands of hypocritical sinners, and all it pretty much does is sinfully brutalize and degrade women. Hey, in all fairness, Jesus didn't have to pull that, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" stuff on the Irish, who most definately do not mess around, especially when religion is brought into the mix. For you non-Irish folk out there, if you think that disciplinary Catholic establishments and the Irish are hardcore individually, just imagine them combined, then you might have a better idea of why this film was shot in Scotland, rather than Ireland. You might think that this film's Scottish makers didn't want to spend money to go to Ireland and knew that Scottish is close enough to Irish, but really, I'm betting that even the Scots were afraid to enter an Irish Roman Catholic establishment, much less shoot in one. Hey, I don't really care where in the world this film was shot, because, regardless of the value of story concept, we probably could have done without it, which isn't to say that this film is actually bad, because on top of being too bland to be bad, this film has a few additional saving graces.
This kind of, as the Rotten Tomatoes consensus put it, "women-in-prision film" has been done time and again, yet the subject matter remains quite strong, being rich with dramatic possibilities that this film all too often fails miserably at executing adequately, yet still stand firm enough in concept to create some moderate degree of immediate intrigue. Overambition and oh so many other mishaps in Peter Mullan's directorial execution betray and often dilute this intrigue, not enough to where the film loses so much juice that it sputters out at contempt, but certainly to where the film generally fails to bite as firmly as it should, and yet, with that said, as improvable as Mullan's efforts are, it's hard to deny the ambition and how such ambition can spark inspiriation. The film's effective occasions are ever so rare, and even when they do arrive, they still need a bit of additional juicing up, yet they can be found and, for an all too brief moment, truly spark this film to life and give you a fairly fine taste at what this film could have been: a tense, emotionally resonant and altogether provocatively effective meditation on the dark depths of humanity and the misguided religious. As a whole, this film fails to that, which is what it first set out to be, and I hate that, as this subject matter deserves better, yet it's not like effective occasions don't stand here and there, going intensified by a strength that stands consistent, no matter how much this film falls flat: outstanding acting. Films built around this much intense dramatic meditativeness are indeed directorial challenges, and ones that too many directors, such as Mullan, fail to overcome, yet as an acting challenge, films of this type have a better track record of being well-done, and sure enough, if nothing else can be said about this film, it is an awesome acting piece, with the antagonists' performers proving effectively convincing as cruelly misguided religious abusers, and the leads ranging from remarkable to truly sensational, whether it be the gracefully human Anne-Marie Duff as the audience avatar, or the subtly atmospheric Nora Jane Noone as the flawed headstrong, or the emotionally powerful, heavily layered and overall show-stealing Eileen Walsh as the unstable yet somewhat hopeful sufferer. The film's strengths are just so startlingly limited, yet what strengths there are are considerably potent and could have made the final product a truly rewarding one. As they stand, the strengths save the film and, at the same time, remind of the areas in which the film does anything but accel, for although the film is graced with its share of high spots and simply being too bland to be bad, a promising project's potential worthiness goes much more often than undercut by the final product's being, well, to be frank, just so blasted boring!
Now, this film isn't necessarily one of those abstract, do-nothing art pieces that the critics love to celebrate, even though the actual success rate of those films are so startlingly slim it's all but unreal, so don't go in expecting something like the somehow even more tediously boring, monotonous and do-nothing prison suffering film, "Hunger" (Don't worry too much, you pretentious jerks, I still didn't hate it; you'd be surprised how far my "Too Bland to Be Bad" rule goes), but, jumpin' James McAvoy (A little something for Anne-Marie Duff, that little cougar), it is exceedingly slow, not just in structure, but in atmospheric pacing, with most every one of this film's 119 moving near-glacially, largely because hardly anything goes on during the 119 minutes in question. Again, we're not talking about "Hunger" in all of its "watching an abridgement of an expendable officer character's entire workday [b][u]for no reason at all[/u][/b]" non-glory, yet the film is riddled with long periods of nothingness, broken up by events that are rarely all that engaging in the first place. Needless to say, this film's formula of meandering through nothingness until we reach a typically underwhelming actual happening gets to be, not repetitious, but all-out monotonous quite quickly, and that, combined with other missteps that lead back to slowness, does serious damage to the film, which possibly would have stood a slight chance of being saved as decent if it didn't make all of the dullness that undercuts what could have made this film an engrossing one all the worse through, to put it simply, lifelessness. Again, it's not like the film is thoroughly cold, as director Peter Mullan's ambition is all but impossible to ignore, largely because it way too often sinks into overambition, and partially because there are, in fact, a few occasions in which Mullan delivers on reasonable effectiveness, or at least about as much as he can, yet on the whole, Mullan takes on the aforementioned challenge of working with an atmosphere driven by intense meditativeness and fails miserably, robbing much of the atmosphere of meditative subtlety and leaving many of the film's themes and conflicts, which seriously need to be effectively handled, to often come off as overbearing and fall-flat. The film's atmosphere is in desperate need of subtlety, something that Mullan is all too often unable too deliver on, yet such a misfire with conflict handling is merely a branch from the key flaw within the film's atmosphere and, by extension, the film itself: no juice in atmosphere. Mullan has his breakthroughs with the help of his excessive ambition, yet on the whole, whether it's attempting to establish conflict or attempting to establish the slightest bit of emotional resonance, the atmosphere turns cold, dry and dead, and because of this, the film is generally, not simply not as effective as it really does need to be, but boring as all get-out. This film is thoroughly dull, and therein rests what may very well be the key saving grace for this film: blandness so intense that the film is secured from collapse into contempt, yet make no mistake, with all of its reasonably bright occasions, this film blandly - nay - boringly betrays its ambitions and ultimately falls flat as an unrewarding bore of squandered opportunity.
Overall, the film's subject matter is worthy, and ever so occasionally brought to life by reasonably effective moments through all of the ambitious pushing for bite within Peter Mullan's direction, as well as consistently complimented by performances that range from commendable to phenomenal, thus the film finds itself graced with strengths that aid in its going saved from overall badness, yet can't save the film as decent, going undercut by a monotonously do-little formula and a primarily cold atmosphere that drains life, resonance and even subtlety until "The Magdalene Sisters" ultimately falls flat an overambitious and incredibly mediocre misfire.
2/5 - Mediocre
