Editor

Back at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, Peter Mullan confessed his intentions
to make a film about women as victims of social oppression. He also feared that
it would cause quite a controversy and perhaps get banned. So far this film
entitled The Magdalene Sisters has made a very strong impression among
the films in the Venice official competition. Mullan's portrayal of young female
interns in Irish catholic asylums is indeed very heatedly controversial, yet
this cannot hide the sheer qualities of the director's second feature. Filmfestivals.com
met with Mullan at Venice to inquire about the many aspects of the film and
director's career.

Back in 1998 at the Cannes Film Festival, you talked about making a film
about women. Was that Magdalene ?

Yes, it was. I started to write two weeks before Cannes. And I honestly thought
in my naivety that after Cannes, I would follow with the script of The Magdalene
Sisters. And then, hopefully get the money and hopefully get to direct what
would then be my second feature. And then Cannes happened. And when they gave
me that gong for acting [Best Actor for his role in My Name is Joe],
suddenly I had an acting career that I had never had before. I had always been
an actor, but no one particularly wanted to give me any great part. So they
gave me that bloody gong, and suddenly I got acting work that I had never been
offered before. And miraculously, things kept up for the next couple of years.

So I only did acting jobs that I really wanted to do and that paid for me to
write Magdalene, as well as bringing up three kids. But to cut a longer
story short, the film took much longer to write than it should have done. I
should have written this film in about six weeks. But it turned out to be six
months, because I kept going off and doing different things. Then I was promoting
My Name is Joe, promoting Orphans. Things just got nuts. I finally
finished the script in January 2000 and it then took a year to get the money
and make the film.

People always said nice things about the script, but I think they were a little
bit frightened of the subject and the reactions from the church. But the bottom
line is, I think, they thought it wouldn't make any money. That's the nature
of low-budget filmmaking, you're always going to come across that. People who
give you money want it back. What I have a problem with, they don't just want
their money back, they want 150 pounds back for every pound.

The film is based or is inspired by a documentary called Sex in a Cold
Climate. How did you come across this documentary and how did it inspire
you?

I was channel-hopping in my kitchen one night, and I heard a woman's voice
say, "They put me away because I was too pretty." And that kind of
caught my attention. My first thought obviously was, 'Who would put you away
for being pretty?' And I had no idea what the documentary was about. I think
I had missed the first 5-10 minutes of it. So I watched it and I was absolutely
blown away. I was aghast and crying. So my wife came down and I told her what
I had just watched. And then the next day, I started making notes. And I started
finding myself very angry on their behalf and on everybody's behalf, I guess.
It just infuriated me, particularly the little things, the way the Magdalene
sisters cut the girls' hair for running away, took off their clothes and made
fun of their bodies. It was those things that really took my breath away. Even
though it wasn't the big cruelty of the concentration camps, it was a smaller,
more domestic, more vicious kind of thing that really angered me.

And I remember that wwhich instantly came back to me was a nun I worked for
when I was 17. And she was the cruelest woman I had ever met. We were watching
over homeless women in London, and she always smiled, always had a twinkle in
her eye. She was a real Irish woman. And I had never seen cruelty like that.
She knew how to really hurt women. And I was only 17. She would lock women out
all night long, just on a whim. But always in a very charming way. And that
always stuck with me. It stuck with me also as an actor. I learned a lot from
her. It's like, 'Don't ever play cruel in the obvious demonic sense.' That's
not how it works. Really cruel people are quite content with it. They're actually
almost unaware that they're being so cruel.

You've had quite a brutal family life yourself. Do you think that if you
had been a girl, you would have ended up in a Magdalene asylum?

Most definitely. I couldn't have in Scotland, because there weren't Magdalene
asylums in Scotland. My brother and I went over to Ireland to do some research
for the casting. And we both agreed that had we been Irish and done the things
that we did in Scotland, we would have been locked up by the Christian Brothers,
that's the boy equivalent of the Magdalene asylums. They would have thrown us
in and thrown away the keys. Without a doubt.

And I remember as a kid, my father was a very cruel man. He was alcoholic and
particularly vicious. And I remember when I got a little older, from 11 to 13,
thinking, 'Why do we stay here?' And we thought, 'There's the door. We can walk
through that door, it's not locked.' But where do you go? That's why I empathized
with a lot of the Magdalene girls. Where do you go? Where do you want to go
to? And you realize then the awfulness of oppression. The real oppressors don't
need a gun. They just need a look. That's how real oppressors go. They don't
go (threateningly, as if holding a rifle), 'You better do as I tell you to do.'
They just look and say it right, 'You're trying to tell me that you're not going
to do what I tell you to do?' And you do the rest. You're so terrified and enamoured
by your abuser, it can be a partner, a father, a mother, a boss, a school teacher.
And cruel people know that they just have to instigate, press the button and
you do all the rest. You do the oppression.

You're an accomplished actor, writer and filmmaker. Do you feel that it's
a complete package that you have to have your hands in, or do you feel a bent
for a particular aspect?

I want to keep doing all three. I don't care if I'm behind or in front of the
camera. Every part has its own good and bad points. The great thing about acting,
why I adore acting is because, at the end of the day, you say, 'Goodbye!' You
have a pint and go to bed. And you have such fun on the set. I love actors.
And I love to see the work through somebody else's eye. And get well paid!

As a director, you don't get well paid. And it's 24 hours, 7 days a week. But
the payoff with directing is, if you do it and people like it, then you get
the pleasure that you don't get as an actor. Like doing interviews as an actor
is hell. It's boring to talk about it. And it's always embarrassing to talk
about oneself as an actor. I find it much more fun to talk about directing.
Because it doesn't just feel vain.

Robin Gatto & Carol Shyman