When Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters won the Venice Film Festival’s top award in 2002, L’Osservatore Romano,
the Vatican’s semi-official newspaper, published a scathing piece
calling it “an angry and rancorous provocation,” among other things.
In 2003 the U.S. bishops’ film review office called The Magdalene Sisters, which depicts abusive conditions in religious Irish institutions for “fallen women,” a “coarse fact-based but manipulative melodrama.” I had just begun at the National Catholic Register that year, and I wrote a cautious but severe review (with a follow-up piece a few years later) over which I still get occasional angry emails. Similar takes appeared in other Catholic publications.
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/mostly-positive-catholic-response-to-spotlight/
In 2003 the U.S. bishops’ film review office called The Magdalene Sisters, which depicts abusive conditions in religious Irish institutions for “fallen women,” a “coarse fact-based but manipulative melodrama.” I had just begun at the National Catholic Register that year, and I wrote a cautious but severe review (with a follow-up piece a few years later) over which I still get occasional angry emails. Similar takes appeared in other Catholic publications.
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/mostly-positive-catholic-response-to-spotlight/